But it was his occupation that I did not understand. He was creeping along by the side of a ditch, with his knees bowed, and eagerness in his air, and ever and anon he clapped to his shoulder a long machine, which seemed of a mongrel breed, between a duck-gun and a cross-bow; having the long barrel and stock of the one, and the arc and cord of the other. Continually as he placed it at his shoulder, I heard something plump into the ditch, on which he shook his head with evident mortification, and proceeded a little farther. I followed at the same stealthy pace, and he seemed rather flattered than discomposed by the attention I gave to his movements. At length he look a long and steady aim, drew the trigger, the bow twanged, and rushing forward with a shout of exultation, he seized an immense frog he had just shot, and held it up in triumph by the leg.[10] -------------------- [Footnote 10: Those who imagine this to be a jest deceive themselves; I have seen the same more than once since.] -------------------- "Qu'elle est belle! Qu'elle est belle!" cried he, turning to me as I came up. "It was a long shot, too," he added. I paid him a compliment upon the achievement, and asked if he had had much sport. He said, "No, that the weather was so hot that the frogs kept principally to the water, and they had been so much hunted that they were very wild." "How!" cried I; "you do not shoot them sitting?" He told me that he did, and asked me how I thought they ought to be shot? I told him that to shoot them sitting was mere poaching, that he ought to take them in the leap. He said "that a young man like me might do those things, but for an old man like him it was not so easy, but, however, that he would try." I assured him that he ought to do so, and having examined his _arbalète_, I left him to endeavour to shoot frogs flying if he could. As I went home I could not help moralizing upon the change which has taken place in Frenchmen since the revolution--a change which has altered them entirely, and yet left them nearly as different from the English as ever. I then asked myself in what the difference between us and our neighbours consisted, and I laid down in my own mind a whole table of DISTINCTIONS. Liberiùs si Dixero quid, si fortè jocosiùs, hoc mihi juris Cum veniâ dabis.--HORACE. They may be true or they may be false, but I beg it to be understood that they are given with perfect good humour towards a people for many of whom I have a high personal regard.