The large majority of her contemporaries would have been careful not to imitate her, and if they resigned themselves to the chase, it was for some good reason. Personally they went in for little else than hawking. It was indifferent to them whether men rode out and effected more or less slaughter; but they loved the associations of the hunt—the delightful evenings, favourable to flirtation (when the hunters were not too hungry or sleepy); the succeeding days of tranquillity, when the unconstraint of country life allowed them to rise early and come down into the fresh air without stopping to do up their hair or their complexions, but with clear, rosy cheeks; to hurry through a hunter’s mass, and then start gossiping in the shade on the respective merits of dogs and birds until it was time for breakfast. In short, to platonist ladies, the less hunting there was, the more genuine and admirable the chase appeared. If men absolutely insisted on spilling blood, why not get it over quickly? Why not fill their parks with tame stags and one fine morning go out and massacre a few? But for pity’s sake let there be no more talk of their Red Indian stratagems, or of competing in instinct with the animals! “Tell me,” cries Margaret of France, “is the capture of a stag fit work for a prince?”—he might as well turn mason or hind! They came to the conclusion that, if they did not wish to live in the kennel, there was nothing for it but to give up hunting, and this was more logical than Budé’s or Blando’s attempt to imbue huntsmen with lofty and fantastic ideas which would never make a good sportsman. Like all human things, the charming theories we have just indicated had their dark side. The habit of suppressing nature, of making her all grace and attractiveness, of embellishing and transfiguring her, is pretty sure to lead to the loss of any real knowledge of nature. A landscape is transformed into a drawing-room. Lemaire de Belges and others discourse to us of nothing but branches gently swaying, rustling leaflets, the waning autumn, huts in which mock shepherds in sham goat-skins listen to the moaning of the winter wind with a ravishment which it is difficult not to fancy humbug too. If only this mawkish sentimentality always led to the ideal! But no; the coy Phillises sport their demure little tricks at all hours but the lover’s hour, when perhaps they would not be out of place.