Scarcely, however, had I time to help myself to a ponderous slice, and to add thereto a portion of wild boar's face, which exceeded any Hampshire chaw I ever tasted, when I fancied that I heard a low groan quite near. The sound made me start up and look around; but as I could perceive nothing, as hunger was unruly, and as the groom, who by this time was deep in the appropriate worship of the pasty, declared he had heard nothing, I sat down again, and in one attack very nearly demolished the slice I had first assigned to myself. I then added a draught of excellent Burgundy from a flask which the _bissac_ also afforded; but I now certainly began to think that our regale had made the hamadryads envious, for another distinct groan followed, evidently proceeding from a large oak tree hard by, and the moment after, the body of a man appeared, cautiously descending from the higher boughs. As he swarmed down the trunk, tightly embracing its rugged circumference with his arms, which operation was rendered somewhat difficult by a certain degree of obesity in his own person, he every now and then turned his head partly over his shoulder, as if to obtain a sight of the good things before us, exclaiming, as he did so, "It is irresistible!--philosophy is in vain--I resign myself to my fate!" The next minute his feet touched the ground, and turning round with a sort of joyous pirouette, he gave me a full view of my acquaintance, Jacques Marlot. I confess that a suspicion of the identity of this genius of the oak and the ci-devant printer had crossed my mind, as he descended the tree, from various peculiar points of his rotund conformation; but it appeared that on his part, although he had obtained a thorough perception of what we had been eating and drinking, his bird's-eye view in the tree had not enabled him to see enough of our faces to recognise my person, for his first exclamation was, as he turned round, "Gentlemen, I am an hungered; and if ye do not give me food, ye have committed a heinous sin in displaying that delicious _pâté_ before me.--Ye gods! what do I see?" he continued, as his eye lighted full upon me: "My ph[oe]nix of pages--my master Jean l'Anglais! My deliverer from a more elevated station than ever I coveted! Let me embrace thee in token of thanks for my abasement."