On the Saturday night, all was ready, thanks to the ten francs Boudoux had received. When the robin's last song was ended we spread the two pools with snares. Then we wrapped ourselves up, Auguste in his greatcoat, I in my blanket, on a bed of ferns prepared by Boudoux, and we tried to sleep.
I say we tried to sleep, but, although the air around us was balmy, the forest quiet, the moonlight serene, the expectation of pleasure keeps one awake almost as much as pleasure itself. It is very rarely I sleep the night before a hunting expedition, and only when life is more seriously preoccupied do these pleasant attacks of insomnia cease.
It was then very rarely that I slept on fine nights, when excited by anticipation of a bird-snaring, or shooting, or hunting excursion. Those lonely vigils were not waste time, for I love solitude and silence and vastness, and I owe this love to those nights spent in the forest, at the foot of a tree, watching the stars through the canopy of leaves stretched between me and the sky, and listening to all the mysterious, incomprehensible sounds which are awake in the bosom of the wood while Nature sleeps.
Lafarge slept hardly more than I did. What was he dreaming of, I wonder? Probably of the face of a pretty grisette he had deserted in a Parisian garret; or, simpler explanation still, of that overweening ambition of his to become a solicitor, though only the son of a coppersmith.
At three o'clock in the morning the song of a robin, as it hopped among the bushes, announced to us that day had come, as it had announced night to us; next a blackbird fluted, then the tomtits and jays followed suit.
Each bird seemed to have his own special hour for waking and praising God. I never recollect to have taken part in or seen such a haul of birds as we took that day. We numbered jays, blackbirds, and thrushes by the dozen; redbreasts, tomtits, linnets, and warblers by the score; and we returned to the town bent down under the weight of our spoils.
Three days after, Auguste Lafarge returned to Paris. His attractions had failed; he had come to Villers-Cotterets to ask Mademoiselle Picot to marry him, and had been rejected.
The night he spent with me he was not dreaming of ambition, or of love, but of revenge: he was concocting an epigram, copies of which he gave to me and to twenty other persons when he left.
It ran as follows:—
"La fière Éléonor compte avec complaisance
Les nombreux soupirants qui briguèrent sa main,
Et que sa noble indifférence
Paya toujours d'un froid dédain.
Pourtant, à ces discours que votre esprit résiste;
S'il en fut un ou deux tenté par ses ducats,
Un volume in quarto contiendrait il la liste
De tous ceux qui n'en voudraient pas?"