Choron was always ready. Until he got jealous ideas into his head,—miserable ideas which ended fatally for him,—no one could say he had ever seen Choron ill or gloomy.
It mattered not at what time of day or night M. Deviolaine might knock at his door to question him, he was always the same. He knew, almost to within fifty yards, where the wild boars' lairs were in his range of forest; for Choron, like Bas-de-Cuir, would follow a trail for whole days together. If the meet was at Maison-Neuve, if sport were desired a quarter of a league, half a league, or a whole league from there, if the beast had been diverted by Choron, it was known beforehand what sort of a beast they had to deal with, whether a tiean, a youngster or an old boar; a boar or a sow; if the sow was in pig, and how long she had gone. The most artful old boar could not hide six months of his age from Choron, who, by inspecting his footmarks, could verify his birth certificate.
It was wonderful to watch him, and it especially astonished the Parisian sportsmen who came to hunt in our forest from time to time. To us countrybred huntsmen, who had practised the same art, though in a humbler degree, the power did not seem so supernatural.
But, all the same, Choron was looked upon by his comrades as a kind of oracle in all matters connected with the hunting of big game.
Courage, too, soon acquires a mighty power over men. Choron did not know what fear meant; he had never shrunk back before either man or beast. He would hunt out the boar from the deepest lair; he would attack poachers in their safe strongholds. Truth to tell, Choron did receive some tusk thrusts in his thigh occasionally, or some grapeshot in his back; but he had a sovereign remedy for treating such wounds. He would bring up two or three bottles of white wine from his cellar, pull one of his dogs from its pet corner, lie down on a deerskin, make Rocador or Fanfaro lick his wound; and, meanwhile, to compensate for the blood he had lost, he would swallow what he called his cooling draught; he would not reappear that evening, but by the morrow he would be cured.
Yet, singularly enough, Choron was not a first-rate shot, and in what were called "hamper hunts "—that is to say, when the object was to send away smaller game, such as rabbits, hares, partridges, or venison, to the duc d'Orléans—Choron rarely supplied his quota.
On these occasions he yielded the sovereignty of the chase to Moinat or to Mildet.
Moinat was the best marksman with small shot, and Mildet the first at bullet firing, in the forest of Villers-Cotterets. If it was Montagnon who had taught me how to take a gun to pieces and put it together again, it was Moinat who had taught me how to use it. Montagnon had only made a gunsmith's assistant of me; Moinat turned me out an accomplished shot.
When Moinat's gun covered any animal whatsoever, from a snipe to a deer, it was, bar accident, as good as dead: and the same skill often extended to those who went hunting with him. M. Deviolaine invited Moinat to his special hunts, declaring that he never shot well unless he felt Moinat near his side.