The hut occupied by Yvon and his family lay in one of the most secluded parts of the forest. Until the year 1033, they had suffered less than other serf families from the devastations of the recurring famine. Occasionally Yvon brought down a stag or doe. The meat was smoked, and the provision thus laid by kept the family from want. With the beginning of the year 1033, however, one of the epidemics that often afflict the beasts of the fields attacked the wild animals of the forest of Compiegne. They grew thin, lost their strength, and their flesh that speedily decomposed, dropped from their bones. In default of venison, the family was reduced towards the end of autumn to wild roots and dried berries. They also ate up the snakes that they caught and that, fattened, crawled into their holes for the winter. As hunger pressed, Yvon killed and ate his hunting dog that he had named Deber-Trud in memory of the war-dog of his ancestor Joel. Subsequently the family was thrown upon the juice of barks, and then upon the broth of dried leaves. But the nourishment of dead leaves soon became unbearable, and likewise did the sap-wood, or second rind of young trees, such as elders and aspen trees, which they beat to a pulp between stones, have to be given up. At the time of the two previous famines, some wretched people were said to have supported themselves with a kind of fattish clay. Not far from Yvon's hut was a vein of such clay. Towards the end of December, Yvon went out for some of it. It was a greenish earth of fine paste, soft but heavy, and of insipid taste. The family thought themselves saved. All its members devoured the first meal of the clay. But on the morrow their contracted stomachs refused the nourishment that was as heavy as lead.
CHAPTER III.
ON THE BUCK'S TRACK.
Thirty-six hours of fast had followed upon the meal of clay in Yvon's hut. Hunger gnawed again at the family's entrails.
During these thirty-six hours a heavy snow had fallen. Yvon went out. His family was starving within. He had death on his soul. He went towards the nets that he had spread in the hope of snaring some bird of passage during the snow storm. His expectations were deceived. A little distance from the nets lay the Fountain of the Hinds, now frozen hard. Snow covered its borders. Yvon perceived the imprint of a buck's feet. The size of the imprint on the snow announced the animal's bulk. Yvon estimated its weight by the cracks in the ice on the stream that it had just crossed, the ice being otherwise thick enough to support Yvon himself. This was the first time in many months that the forester had run across a buck's track. Could the animal, perhaps, have escaped the general mortality of its kind? Did it come from some distant forest? Yvon knew not, but he followed the fresh track with avidity. Yvon had with him his bow and arrows. To reach the animal, kill it and smoke its flesh meant the saving of the lives of his family, now on the verge of starvation. It meant their life for at least a month. Hope revivified the forester's energies; he pursued the buck; the regular impress of its steps showed that the animal was quietly following one of the beaten paths of the forest; moreover its track lay so clearly upon the snow that he could not have crossed the stream more than an hour before, else the edges of the imprint that he left behind him would have been less sharp and would have been rounded by the temperature of the air. Following its tracks, Yvon confidently expected to catch sight of the buck within an hour and bring the animal down. In the ardor of the chase, the forester forgot his hunger. He had been on the march about an hour when suddenly in the midst of the profound silence that reigned in the forest, the wind brought a confused noise to his ears. It sounded like the distant bellowing of a stag. The circumstance was extraordinary. As a rule the beasts of the woods do not cry out except at night. Thinking he might have been mistaken, Yvon put his ear to the ground.... There was no more room for doubt. The buck was bellowing at about a thousand yards from where Yvon stood. Fortunately a turn of the path concealed the hunter from the game. These wild animals frequently turn back to see behind them and listen. Instead of following the path beyond the turning that concealed him, Yvon entered the copse expecting to make a short cut, head off the buck, whose gait was slow, hide behind the bushes that bordered the path, and shoot the animal when it hove in sight.
The sky was overcast; the wind was rising; with deep concern Yvon noticed several snow flakes floating down. Should the snow fall heavily before the buck was shot, the animal's tracks would be covered, and if opportunity failed to dart an arrow at it from the forester's ambuscade, he could not then expect to be able to trace the buck any further. Yvon's fears proved correct. The wind soon changed into a howling storm surcharged with thick snow. The forester quitted the thicket and struck for the path beyond the turning and at about a hundred paces from the clearing. The buck was nowhere to be seen. The animal had probably caught wind of its pursuer and jumped for safety into the thicket that bordered the path. It was impossible to determine the direction that it had taken. Its tracks vanished under the falling snow, that lay in ever thicker layers.
A prey to insane rage, Yvon threw himself upon the ground and rolled in the snow uttering furious cries. His hunger, recently forgotten in the ardor of the hunt, tore at his entrails. He bit one of his arms and the pain thus felt recalled him to his senses. Almost delirious, he rose with the fixed intent of retracing the buck, killing the animal, spreading himself beside its carcass, devouring it raw, and not rising again so long as a shred of meat remained on its bones. At that moment, Yvon would have defended his prey with his knife against even his own son. Possessed by the fixed and delirious idea of retracing the buck, Yvon went hither and thither at hap-hazard, not knowing in what direction he walked. He beat about a long time, and night began to approach, when a strange incident came to his aid and dissipated his mental aberration.
CHAPTER IV.
GREGORY THE HOLLOW-BELLIED.
Driven by the gale, the snow continued to fall, when suddenly Yvon's nostrils were struck by the exhalations emitted by frying meat. The odor chimed in with the devouring appetite that was troubling his senses, and at least bestowed back upon him the instinct of seeking to satisfy his hunger. He stood still, whiffed the air hither and thither like a wolf that from afar scents carrion, and looked about in order to ascertain by the last glimmerings of the daylight where he was. Yvon was at the crossing of a path in the forest that led from the little village of Ormesson. The road ran before a tavern where travelers usually put up for the night. It was kept by a serf of the abbey of St. Maximim named Gregory, and surnamed the Hollow-bellied, because, according to him, nothing could satisfy his insatiable appetite. An otherwise kind-hearted and cheerful man, the serf often, before these distressful times, and when Yvon carried his tithe of game to the castle, had accommodatedly offered him a pot of hydromel. A prey now to the lashings of hunger and exasperated by the odor of fried meat which escaped from the tavern, Yvon carefully approached the closed door. In order to allow the smoke to escape, Gregory had thrown the window half open without fear of being seen. By the light of a large fire that burned in the hearth, Yvon saw Gregory seated on a stool placidly surveying the broiling of a large piece of meat whose odor had so violently assailed the nostrils of the famishing forester.