Lunéville qu'il etoit si fort hay en Angleterre que les plus zelez partisans de leur Maitre auoint temoigné qu'ils ne feroint jamais rien pour ces interests tant qu'il l'auroit au-prez de luy_." All these men evidently have very little knowledge of what is going on at home, he says. There is no one in whose judgment the Pretender might repose any faith except it be the Earl of Oxford or Lord Bolingbroke. On the whole, the Pretender's life at Bar, though perhaps a little monotonous, can scarcely have been unpleasant. He made friends with the local _haute volée_, asking them to dinner, and being asked back--and borrowed money from them whenever he could. His especial friends were the Marquis de Bassompierre, from whom he borrowed 15,000 livres, which the Duke repaid in 1719, and M. de Rousselle. A good deal of time the Chevalier spent in his closet, with Nairne, or Higgons, or Middleton, concocting plans and dictating long memorials to the Pope, or else to Cardinal Gualterio, advocating the canonisation of Bellarmine, recommending _protégés_ for places which they never got, and insisting on his right to nominate bishops to Irish sees, the names of which he could not spell. At off-times he played _reversi_, _boston_, and _ombre_, and occasionally _petit palet_, which is an aristocratic form of chuck-farthing. Then there was the pleasure of the chase, of which we know from Father Leslie that James was a tolerably keen votary. In Lorraine the diversion of _vénerie_ was held in high estimation, though reserved only for very great magnates, and guarded by a ring-fence of the strictest enactments against vulgar intrusion. Poaching accordingly came to be a very common offence. "Ground game," indeed--at any rate rabbits--it was open to all to shoot. "High game"--_i.e._, deer--on the other hand, was reserved within certain limits exclusively for the Duke. Within about eight miles of the Duke's palaces, in what were called the ducal _plaisirs_, not even nobles of the highest rank were permitted to shoot or hunt. No dogs belonging to private persons were allowed in the fields near those _plaisirs_, on any pretence whatever, be the deer, and boars, and wolves, ever so troublesome. Even shepherds' dogs and watch-dogs must have their hamstrings cut, or else a log tied round their necks. And in some districts every Parish was required by law to provide a _louvière_ or wolf's pit, 20 feet deep, 18 feet wide at its bottom, and 12 at its opening. From "_le haut puissant messire_" Jean de Ligniville's most amusing disquisitions on "_La Meutte et Venerie_" we learn that the district about Bar was "_très boisé_" and well stocked with game of every description, which, local chroniclers tell us, James was frequently occupied in hunting. Lorrain and English hunting were not then as far apart in their general features as one might be tempted to assume. English kings had more than once sent presents of English hounds to Lorrain dukes--Charles III. received from James I.