As I look back, his figure rises before me, wearing a three-cornered hat, and clad in a green waistcoat with silver buttons, velveteen cord breeches, and high leathern gaiters, with a game bag over his shoulder, his gun in his hand, and a cutty pipe in his mouth.

  Let us pause for a moment to consider this pipe, for this pipe grew to be, not merely an accessory, but an integral part of Mocquet. Nobody could remember ever having seen Mocquet without it. If by any chance Mocquet did not happen to have it in his mouth, he had it in his hand.

  This pipe, having to accompany Mocquet into the heart of the thickest coverts, it was necessary that it should be of such a kind as to offer the least possible opportunity to any other solid body of bringing about its destruction; for the destruction of his old, well-colored cutty would have been to Mocquet a loss that years alone could not have repaired.

  Therefore the stem of Mocquet’s pipe was not more than half-an-inch long; moreover you might always wager that half that half inch at least was supplied by the quill of a feather.

  This habit of never being without his pipe, which, by causing the almost entire disappearance of both canines, had hollowed out a sort of vice for itself on the left side of his mouth, between the fourth incisor and the first molar, had given rise to another of Mocquet’s habits; this was to speak with his teeth clenched, whereby a certain impression of obstinacy was conveyed by all he said.

  This became even more marked if Mocquet chanced at any moment to take his pipe out of his mouth, for there was nothing then to prevent the jaws closing and the teeth coming together in a way which prevented the words passing through them at all except in a sort of whistle, which was hardly intelligible.

  Such was Mocquet with respect to outward appearance. In the following pages I will endeavor to give some idea of his intellectual capacity and moral qualities.

  IV

  Early one morning, before my father had risen, Mocquet walked into his room, and planted himself at the foot of the bed, stiff and upright as a signpost.

  “Well, Mocquet,” said my father, “what’s the matter now? What gives me the pleasure of seeing you here at this early hour?”

  “The matter is, General,” replied Mocquet with the utmost gravity, “the matter is that I am nightmared.”

  Mocquet had, quite unawares to himself, enriched the language with a double verb, both active and passive.

  “You are nightmared?” responded my father, raising himself on his elbow. “Dear, dear, that’s a serious matter, my poor Mocquet.”

  “You are right there, General.”

  And Mocquet took his pipe out of his mouth, a thing he did rarely, and only on the most important occasions.

  “And how long have you been nightmared?” continued my father compassionately.

  “For a whole week, General.”

  “And who by, Mocquet?”

  “Ah! I know very well who by,” answered Mocquet, through his teeth, which were so much the more tightly closed that his pipe was in his hand, and his hand behind his back.

  “And may I also know by whom?”

  “By Mother Durand, of Haramont, who, as you will have heard, is an old witch.”

  “No, indeed, I assure you I had no idea of such a thing.”

  “Ah! But I know it well enough; I’ve seen her riding past on her broomstick to her Witches’ Sabbath.”

  “You have seen her go by on her broomstick?”

  “As plainly as I see you, General; and more than that, she has an old black billy goat at home that she worships.”

  “And why should she come and nightmare you?”

  “To revenge herself on me, because I came upon her once at midnight on the heath of Gondreville, when she was dancing round and round in her devil’s circle.”

  “This is a most serious accusation which you bring against her, my friend; and before repeating to anyone what you have been telling me in private, I think it would be as well if you tried to collect some more proofs.”

  “Proofs! What more proofs do I want! Does not every soul in the village know that in her youth she was the Mistress of Thibault, the wolf leader?”

  “Indeed! I must look carefully into this matter, Mocquet.”

  “I am looking very carefully into it myself, and she shall pay for it, the old mole!”

  Old mole was an expression that Mocquet had borrowed from his friend Pierre, the gardener, who, as he had no worse enemies to deal with than moles, gave the name of mole to everything and everybody that he particularly detested.

  V

  “I must look carefully into this matter”—these words were not said by my father by reason of any belief he had in the truth of Mocquet’s tale about his nightmare; and even the fact of the nightmare being admitted by him, he gave no credence to the idea that it was Mother Durand who had nightmared the keeper. Far from it; but my father was not ignorant of the superstitions of the people, and he knew that belief in spells was still widespread among the peasantry in the country districts.

  He had heard of terrible acts of revenge carried out by the victims on some man or woman who they thought had bewitched them, in the belief that the charm would thus be broken; and Mocquet, while he stood denouncing Mother Durand to my father, had had such an accent of menace in his voice, and had given such a grip to his gun, that my father thought it wise to appear to agree with everything he said, in order to gain his confidence and so prevent him doing anything without first consulting him.

  So, thinking that he had so far gained an influence over Mocquet, my father ventured to say, “But before you make her pay for it, my good Mocquet, you ought to be quite sure that no one can cure you of your nightmare.”

  “No one can cure me, General,” replied Mocquet in a tone of conviction.

  “How! No one able to cure you?”

  “No one; I have tried the impossible.”

  “And how did you try?”

  “First of all, I drank a large bowl of hot wine before going to bed.”

  “And who recommended that remedy? Was it Monsieur Lécosse?”

  Monsieur Lécosse was the doctor in repute at Villers-Cotterets.

  “Monsieur Lécosse?” exclaimed Mocquet. “No, indeed! What should he know about spells! By my faith, no! It was not Monsieur Lécosse.”

  “Who was it, then?”

  “It was the shepherd of Longpré.”

  “But a bowl of wine, you dunderhead! Why, you must have been dead drunk.”

  “The shepherd drank half of it.”

  “I see; now I understand why he prescribed it. And did the bowl of wine have any effect?”

  “Not any, General; she came trampling over my chest that night, just as if I had taken nothing.”

  “And what did you do next? You were not obliged, I suppose, to limit your efforts to your bowl of hot wine?”

  “I did what I do when I want to catch a wily beast.”

  Mocquet made use of a phraseology which was all his own; no one had ever succeeded in inducing him to say a wild beast; every time my father said wild beast, Mocquet would answer, “Yes, General, I know, a wily beast.”

  “You still stick to your wily beast, then?” my father said to him on one occasion.

  “Yes, General, but not out of obstinacy.”

  “And why then, may I ask?”

  “Because, General, with all due respect to you, you are mistaken about it.”

  “Mistaken? I? How?”

  “Because you ought not to say a wild beast, but a wily beast.”

  “And what is a wily beast, Mocquet?”

  “It is an animal that only goes about at night; that is, an animal that creeps into the pigeon houses and kills the pigeons, like the polecat, or into the chicken houses, to kill the chickens, like the fox; or into the folds, to kill the sheep, like the wolf; it means an animal which is cunning and deceitful, in short, a wily beast.”

  It was impossible to find anything to say after such a logical definition as this. My father, therefore, remained silent, and Mocquet, feeling that he had gained a victory, continued to call wild beasts, wily beasts, utterly unable to understand my father’s obstinacy in continuing to call wily beasts, wild beasts.

  So now you understand why, when my father asked him what else he had done, Mocquet answered, “I did what I do when I want to catch a wily beast.”

  We have interrupted the conversation to give this explanation; but as there was no need of explanation between my father and Mocquet, they had gone on talking, you must understand, without any such break.

  VI

  “And what is it you do, Mocquet, when you want to catch this animal of yours?” asked my father.

  “I set a trarp, General.” Mocquet always called a trap a trarp.

  “Do you mean to tell me you have set a trap to catch Mother Durand?”

  My father had of course said trap; but Mocquet did not like anyone to pronounce words differently from himself, so he went on:

  “Just so, General; I have set a trarp for Mother Durand.”

  “And where have you put your trarp? Outside your door?”

  My father, you see, was willing to make concessions.

  “Outside my door! Much good that would be! I only know she gets into my room, but I cannot even guess which way she comes.”

  “Down the chimney, perhaps?”

  “There is no chimney, and besides, I never see her until I feel her.”

  “And you do see her, then?”

  “As plainly I see you, General.”

  “And what does she do?”

  “Nothing agreeable, you may be sure; she tramples all over my chest: thud, thud! thump, thump!”

  “Well, where have you set your trap, then?”

  “The trarp, why, I put it on my own stomach.”

  “And what kind of a trarp did you use?”

  “Oh! A first-rate trarp!”

  “What was it?”

  “The one I made to catch the gray wolf with, that used to kill M. Destournelles’ sheep.”

  “Not such a first-rate one, then, for the gray wolf ate up your bait, and then bolted.”

  “You know why he was not caught, General?”

  “No, I do not.”

  “Because it was the black wolf that belonged to old Thibault, the sabot maker.”

  “It could not have been Thibault’s black wolf, for you said yourself just this moment that the wolf that used to come and kill M. Destournelles’ sheep was a gray one.”

  “He is gray now, General; but thirty years ago, when Thibault the sabot maker was alive, he was black; and, to assure you of the truth of this, look at my hair, which was black as a raven’s thirty years ago, and now is as gray as the Doctor’s.”

  The Doctor was a cat, an animal of some fame, that you will find mentioned in my memoirs and known as the Doctor on account of the magnificent fur which nature had given it for a coat.

  “Yes,” replied my father. “I know your tale about Thibault, the sabot maker; but, if the black wolf is the devil, Mocquet, as you say he is, he would not change color.”

  “Not at all, General; only it takes him a hundred years to become quite white, and the last midnight of every hundred years, he turns black as a coal again.”

  “I give up the case, then, Mocquet; all I ask is that you will not tell my son this fine tale of yours, until he is fifteen at least.”

  “And why, General?”

  “Because it is no use stuffing his mind with nonsense of that kind, until he is old enough to laugh at wolves, whether they are white, gray, or black.”

  “It shall be as you say, General; he shall hear nothing of this matter.”

  “Go on, then.”

  “Where had we got to, General?”

  “We had got to your trarp, which you had put on your stomach, and you were saying that it was a first-rate trarp.”

  “By my faith, General, that was a first-rate trarp! It weighed a good ten pounds. What am I saying! Fifteen pounds at least with its chain! I put the chain over my wrist.”

  “And what happened that night?”

  “That night? Why, it was worse than ever! Generally, it was in her leather overshoes she came and kneaded my chest, but that night she came in her wooden sabots.”

  “And she comes like this …?”

  “Every blessed one of God’s nights, and it is making me quite thin; you can see for yourself, General, I am growing as thin as a lath. However, this morning I made up my mind.”

  “And what did you decide upon, Mocquet?”

  “Well, then, I made up my mind I would let fly at her with my gun.”

  “That was a wise decision to come to. And when do you think of carrying it out?”

  “This evening, or tomorrow at latest, General.”

  “Confound it! And just as I was wanting to send you over to Villers-Hellon.”

  “That won’t matter, General. Was it something that you wanted done at once?”

  “Yes, at once.”

  “Very well, then, I can go over to Villers-Hellon. It’s not above a few miles, if I go through the wood—and get back here this evening; the journey both ways is only twenty-four miles, and we have covered a few more than that before now out shooting, General.”

  “That’s settled, then; I will write a letter for you to give to M. Collard, and then you can start.”

  “I will start, General, without a moment’s delay.”

  My father rose, and wrote to M. Collard; the letter was as follows:

  My Dear Collard,

  I am sending you that idiot of a

  keeper of mine, whom you know; he has

  taken into his head that an old woman

  nightmares him every night, and, to rid

  himself of this vampire, he intends nothing

  more nor less than to kill her.

  Justice, however, might not look

  favorably on this method of his for curing

  himself of indigestion, and so I am going

  to start him off to you on a pretext of

  some kind or other. Will you, also, on

  some pretext or other, send him on, as

  soon as he gets to you, to Danré, at

  Vouty, who will send him on to Dulauloy,

  who, with or without pretext, may then,

  as far as I care, send him on to the devil?

  In short, he must be kept going for a

  fortnight at least. By that time we shall

  have moved out of here and shall be at

  Antilly, and as he will then no longer be

  in the district of Haramont, and as his

  nightmare will probably have left him on

  the way, Mother Durand will be able to

  sleep in peace, which I should certainly

  not advise her to do if Mocquet were

  remaining anywhere in her neighborhood.

  He is bringing you six brace of snipe

  and a hare, which we shot while out

  yesterday on the marshes of Vallue.

  A thousand-and-one of my tenderest

  remembrances to the fair Herminie, and

  as many kisses to the dear little Caroline.

  Your friend,

  Alex. Dumas.

  An hour later Mocquet was on his way, and, at the end of three weeks, he rejoined us at Antilly.

  “Well,” asked my father, seeing him reappear in robust health, “well, and how about Mother Durand?”

  “Well, General,” replied Mocquet cheerfully. “I’ve got rid of the old mole; it seems she has no power except in her own district.”

  VII

  Twelve years had passed since Mocquet’s nightmare, and I was now over fifteen years of age. It was the winter of 1817 to 1818; ten years before that date I had lost my father.

  We no longer had a Pierre for gardener, a Hippolyte for valet, or a Mocquet for keeper; we no longer lived at the Château of Les Fossés or in the villa at Antilly, but in the marketplace of Villers-Cotterets, in a little house opposite the fountain, where my mother kept a bureau de tabac, selling powder and shot as well over the same counter.

  As you have already read in my memoirs, although still young, I was an enthusiastic sportsman. As far as sport went, however, that is according to the usual acceptation of the word, I had none, except when my cousin, M. Deviolaine, the ranger of the forest at Villers-Cotterets, was kind enough to ask leave of my mother to take me with him. I filled up the remainder of my time with poaching.

  For this double function of sportsman and poacher I was well provided with a delightful single-barreled gun, on which was engraved the monogram of the Princess Borghese, to whom it had originally belonged.

  My father had given it me when I was a child, and when, after his death, everything had to be sold, I implored so urgently to be allowed to keep my gun, that it was not sold with the other weapons and the horses and carriages.

  The most enjoyable time for me was the winter; then the snow lay on the ground, and the birds, in their search for food, were ready to come wherever grain was sprinkled for them. Some of my father’s old friends had fine gardens, and I was at liberty to go and shoot the birds there as I liked. So I used to sweep the snow away, spread some grain, and, hiding myself within easy gunshot, fire at the birds, sometimes killing six, eight, or even ten at a time.

  Then, if the snow lasted, there was another thing to look forward to—the chance of tracing a wolf to its lair, and a wolf so traced was everybody’s property. The wolf, being a public enemy, a murderer beyond the pale of the law, might be shot at by all or anyone, and so, in spite of my mother’s cries, who dreaded the double danger for me, you need not ask if I seized my gun, and was first on the spot ready for sport.

  The winter of 1817 to 1818 had been long and severe; the snow was lying a foot deep on the ground, and so hard frozen that it had held for a fortnight past, and still there were no tidings of anything.

  Towards four o’clock one afternoon Mocquet called upon us; he had come to lay in his stock of powder. While so doing, he looked at me and winked with one eye. When he went out, I followed.

  “What is it, Mocquet?” I asked. “Tell me.”

  “Can’t you guess, Monsieur Alexandre?”