The single-barrelled gun--_Quiot Biche_--Biche and Boudoux compared--I become a poacher--It is proposed to issue a writ against me--Madame Darcourt as plenipotentiary--How it happened that Cretan's writ caused me no bother CHAPTER III Bonaparte's landing at the Gulf of Juan--Proclamations and Ordonnances--Louis XVIII. and M. de Vitrolles--Cornu the hatter--Newspaper information CHAPTER IV General Exelmans--His trial--The two brothers Lallemand--Their conspiracy--They are arrested and led through Villers-Cotterets--The affronts to which they were subjected CHAPTER V My mother and I conspire--The secret--M. Richard--_La pistole_ and the pistols--The offer made to the brothers Lallemand in order to save them--They refuse--I meet one of them, twenty-eight years later, at the house of M. le duc de Cazes CHAPTER VI Napoleon and the Allies--The French army and the Emperor pass through Villers-Cotterets--Bearers of ill tidings CHAPTER VII Waterloo--The Élysée--La Malmaison CHAPTER VIII Cæsar--Charlemagne--Napoleon CHAPTER IX The rout--The haricot mutton reappears--M. Picot the lawyer--By diplomatic means, he persuades my mother to let me go shooting with him--I despise sleep, food and drink CHAPTER X Trapping larks--I wax strong in the matter of my compositions--The wounded partridge--I take the consequences whatever they are--The farm at Brassoire--M. Deviolaine's sally at the accouchement of his wife CHAPTER XI M. Moquet de Brassoire--The ambuscade--Three hares charge me--What prevents me from being the king of the battue--Because I did not take the bull by the horns, I just escape being disembowelled by it--Sabine and her puppies BOOK V CHAPTER I The second period of my youth--Forest-keepers and sailors--Choron, Moinat, Mildet, Berthelin--La Maison-Neuve CHAPTER II Choron and the mad dog--Niquet, otherwise called _Bobino_--His mistress--The boar-hunt--The kill--Bobino's triumph--He is decorated--The boar which he had killed rises again CHAPTER III Boars and keepers--The bullet of Robin-des-Bois--The pork-butcher CHAPTER IV A wolf-hunt--Small towns--Choron's tragic death CHAPTER V My mother realises that I am fifteen years old, and that _la marette_ and _la pipée_ will not lead to a brilliant future for me--I enter the office of Me. Mennesson, notary, as errand-boy, otherwise guttersnipe--Me. Mennesson and his clerks--La Fontaine-Eau-Claire CHAPTER VI Who the assassin was and who the assassinated--Auguste Picot--Equality before the law--Last exploits of Marot--His execution CHAPTER VII