I had decided to undertake this cynegetic jollification because of an unlimited permission from Bixio. That permission had been given to us by our common friend Dupont-Delporte, who, by virtue of our discretionary powers, we had just made sub-lieutenant in the army, together with a delightful lad called Vaillant, who, with Louis Desnoyers, managed a paper called the _Journal Rose_, and also the son of Mademoiselle Duchesnois, who, I believe, died bravely in Algeria. As to Vaillant, I know not what became of him, or whether he followed up his military career; but, if he be still living, no matter where he may be, I offer him greeting, although a quarter of a century has rolled by. Now this permission was indeed calculated to tempt a sportsman. Dupont-Delporte introduced us to his father, and begged him to place his château and estates at our disposition. The château was situated three-quarters of a league from Montigny, a little village which itself was three leagues from Montereau. We left by diligence at six o'clock on the morning of 4 September, and we reached Montereau about four in the afternoon. I was not yet acquainted with Montereau, doubly interesting, historically, by reason of the assassination of the Duke of Burgundy Jean Sans-Peur, and from the victory which, in the desperate struggle of 1814, Napoléon won there over the Austrians and the Würtemburgers. Our caravan was made up of Viardot, author of the _Histoire des Arabes en Espagne_, and, later, husband of that adorable and all round actress called Pauline Garcia; of Bessas-Lamégie, then deputy-mayor of the 10th arrondissement; of Bixio, and of Louis Boulanger. Whilst Bixio, who knew the town, went in search of a carriage to take us to Montigny, Boulanger, Bessas-Lamégie, Viardot and I set to work to turn over the two important pages of history embedded in the little town, written four centuries ago. The position of the bridge perfectly explained the scene of the assassination of the Duke of Burgundy. Boulanger drew for me on the spot a rough sketch, which served me later in my romance of _Isabeau de Bavière_, and in my legend of the _Sire de Giac._ Then we went to see the sword of the terrible duke, which hung in the crypt of the church. If one formed an idea of the man by the sword one would be greatly deceived: imagine the ball swords of Francis II. or of Henri III.! When we had visited the church we had finished with the memories of 1417, and we passed on to those of 1814. We rapidly climbed the ascent of Surville, and found ourselves on the plateau where Napoléon, once more an artilleryman, thundered, with pieces of cannon directed by himself, against the Würtemburgers fighting in the town. It was there that, in getting off his horse and whipping his boot with his horse-whip, he uttered this remarkable sentence, an appeal from Imperial doubt to Republican genius-- "Come, Bonaparte, let us save Napoléon!"