* * * * But if the sylvan youth,
Whose fervent blood boils into violence,
Must1have the chase, behold, despising flight,
The roused-up lion, resolute and slow,
Advancing full on the protended spear.--Thomson.
I had been wandering about one day in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, indulging a variety of desultory meditations, following the uneven tenor of my own mind, sometimes sad and sometimes gay, and sometimes of that odd mixed nature where melancholy and mirth are so intimately commingled, that there is no separating them, when turning round an angle in the road, I had a figure before me whose occupations puzzled me not a little. He was one of that class of beings now nearly extinct, who still cling with pertinacity to powder and pigtails. His face was round, his cheekbones high, his complexion mummy-coloured, his nose turned up and primed with snuff, and in the cavities on each side stood two little dark eyes like black currants shining through a dumpling. The castor which covered his head was intended for a modern hat, but it had still a strange hankering for the form of the old-fashioned shovel, far more pinched behind than before, with the rear rim strongly turned up, as if to avoid the collar of his coat. It seemed that his head had been so long accustomed to wear cocked-hats, that whatever he put upon it assumed something of that form. To finish the whole, on each side under the brim lay two long rows of powdered curls, which flew off in an airy pigtail behind. This sort of man ought to be recorded, for in the course of years it will become unknown, like the mammoth; and strange remnants of whigs and pigtails will be found to puzzle the naturalist and antiquary.
But it was his occupation that I did not understand. He was creeping along by the side of a ditch, with his knees bowed, and eagerness in his air, and ever and anon he clapped to his shoulder a long machine, which seemed of a mongrel breed, between a duck-gun and a cross-bow; having the long barrel and stock of the one, and the arc and cord of the other. Continually as he placed it at his shoulder, I heard something plump into the ditch, on which he shook his head with evident mortification, and proceeded a little farther. I followed at the same stealthy pace, and he seemed rather flattered than discomposed by the attention I gave to his movements. At length he look a long and steady aim, drew the trigger, the bow twanged, and rushing forward with a shout of exultation, he seized an immense frog he had just shot, and held it up in triumph by the leg.[[10]]
"Qu'elle est belle! Qu'elle est belle!" cried he, turning to me as I came up. "It was a long shot, too," he added.
I paid him a compliment upon the achievement, and asked if he had had much sport.
He said, "No, that the weather was so hot that the frogs kept principally to the water, and they had been so much hunted that they were very wild."
"How!" cried I; "you do not shoot them sitting?"
He told me that he did, and asked me how I thought they ought to be shot?
I told him that to shoot them sitting was mere poaching, that he ought to take them in the leap.
He said "that a young man like me might do those things, but for an old man like him it was not so easy, but, however, that he would try."