I REMEMBER noticing, at the time of the ouverture de la chasse last September, that no less than fifteen thousand citizens of Paris had taken out gun licences. It is a figure which, like the long line of patient fishermen on the quays of the Seine, speaks volumes for the indomitable optimism of the sporting instinct in Frenchmen, or, shall we say, for their philosophic acceptance of the day of small things? Down here, in Provence, amongst the vine-lands of the Esterels and the Chaine des Maures, the proportion of able-bodied males which fares forth on Sundays with game-bag, dog, and gun is probably a good deal higher than in the Départments du Nord. No doubt the post-office could give you the amazing totals, but it would be much more interesting to know how the average head of game per gun works out in a season, and to learn what constitutes game in the eyes of the average chasseur; in other words, where he draws the line and not the trigger. As I take my walks abroad and hear them popping away merrily on the wooded hillsides all around; as I watch them, sipping petits verres at their ease in some wayside inn and telling their stirring tales of flood and field, I sometimes ask myself these questions;

but the more one sees of these indefatigable sportsmen, the deeper becomes the mystery of their numbers and perseverance.

Occasionally, when I overtake one, sturdily trudging homewards at dusk, his gamebag hanging suspiciously limp, I fall in with him for a while, and tactfully endeavour to pump him concerning the nature and habitats of his quarry; but the heart of the mystery has never been greatly enlightened by these encounters. Your true son of the soil in these coast-lands of Provence is endowed with a wealth of imagination and of words which leaves Tartarin, so to speak, on the post. He has all of Tartarin's instinct for the dramatic and the picturesque, the méridional's passion for impressing the world at large with a sense of his cleverness and importance; but his methods are more elemental, one might almost say (at a safe distance) more childishly simple, than those of the hero of Tarascon. If you know your "Cantagril" you will understand what I mean. The swagger and panache of the Provençal lack something of that quality of philosophic geniality which makes the extravagant romancers of the true Midi such pleasant com

pany. His humour is often more suggestive of the Irishman, trailing coat-tails provocative, than of the Scotsman, prancing and preening to the sound of the pipes. He is intolerant of interruptions, and inclined, should you ask inconvenient questions, to become somewhat dogmatic and overbearing in his manner. But a good fellow withal, and of infinite variety. Small blame to him for the latter, when you consider the number of races that have gone to the making of his forbears-Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Visigoths, and Greeks, Romans, and Franks and Moors. The Moor in particular has left his mark upon this region of the Esterels as plainly as in Andalusia. You may trace it not only in the architecture of the seaside towns, but in the attitude of Cantagril towards his womenfolk, and in something elusively Oriental in the type and bearing of many of the women themselves.

But to return to our friend the chasseur. The last one with whom I discussed the matter of his quarry, young Fernard, a motor mechanic by trade, was just starting out from his garage when I met him, with an ancient and very rusty fowlingpiece under his arm. It was then past five o'clock, so that by the time he got beyond the vineyards to the nearest foothills, there would not be much more than an hour's daylight left. What did he expect to get in that

Oh, some

time, I inquired. thing or other for the pot-aufeu," he replied airily. "Anything that comes along-a rabbit or a squirrel or two; with luck, a brace of partridges." And with that, as we walked along, he began to tell me volubly of memorable bags that he had made, giving me to understand that he had been a chasseur since he was fourteen, and that there wasn't much that escaped him. "But to-day, as you see, monsieur, I am without a dog. He has gone with my brother Jules. Lucky devil, Jules; he can get a whole day off." The dog, he would have me to know, was the fine flower of all canine intelligence, a species by itself, combining all the virtues and talents of pointer, spaniel, and retriever-a very dog of dogs. "Not much to look at, perhaps, monsieur, but what a nose, what miraculous endurance, what super-dog sagacity!" He was still describing the qualities and exploits of this peerless hound when we came to the cross-roads, where our ways parted, and I bade him farewell.

In the course of the next half-hour, on the main road to Beauvallon, I must have met at least half a dozen more brethren of the gun, some on bicycles and some afoot, all accompanied by weary-looking dogs of fearful and wonderful breeds. One sportsman carried a partridge in the outside netting of his game-bag, for all the world to see; another dis

winding of horns, even as they do it to this day in the forests of Fontainebleau-a costly and unremunerative business. The fact of the matter, I imagine, is that these chasseurs of Provence, of their nature individualists and solitary hunters, know themselves and each other too well to indulge in any hope of circumventing a boar or other wild beast by co-operative venery and combined tactics. The result would be every man, and every dog, for himself, amidst great argument, even as it was of olden times, when they went hunting Saracens with Richard of the Lion Heart and Baldwin of Flanders in the Holy Land. So the wild boar and Reynard go their accustomed ways in the heart of the woods, while Larignac and Condorlet and the rest, with their half-bred pointers and spaniels, pursue the rabbit and the skylark and the thrush. There is, it is true, a legend in these parts of a boar trapped in a pitfall by an Italian, who, in the pursuit of his calling as a cutter of bruyère roots for the pipe-makers, had become learned in woodcraft and the ways

of beasts. Larignac vouches for it as a fact; but his only comment on the exploit is that the meat was tough and unsavoury.

To see and hear our local chasseurs at their best, one should take one's after-dinner coffee under the palm-trees of the little café, whose terrace looks out over the harbour of Ste Maxime across the wine

dark sea to the twinkling lights of St Tropez. There, while they digest their bouilleabaisse (another typical instance, by the way, of the Gallic sporting instinct well content with small things) and savour their rosytinted wine, you may hear them telling each other (or, for lack of listeners, the stars of heaven) tales of the chase by land and sea enough to make Bahram's mouth water. All around and about them, under tables and chairs, with noses comfortably snuggled on front paws, lie their dogs, companions of their glory, but fortunately dumb. Condorlet, no doubt, has heard Larignac's best stories a hundred times, and vice versa, but time cannot wither, nor custom stale, the zest and relish of their telling. Besides, there is always the possibility of a chiel amang them takin' notes, and the chance to épater some wandering bourgeois, even as you or I. To me, as I sit there under the palms, smoking a contemplative pipe and watching a dark sail come round the harbour mouth and glide softly to her moorings, their interminable talk and splendid wealth of gesture are very pertinent and pleasant. For, with all their naïveté, they possess and enjoy something of the Homeric quality, a certain breezy largeness, as of hills and the sea; there are times when their little Odysseys recall to mind the imperishable voices of the Odysseus and the faithful swineherd, on some lone headland of the Cyclades.