who was loading the gun and say, almost
choking with laughter:

"Did that get him, Joseph? Did you see how he fell?" Joseph invariably
replied:

"Oh, monsieur le baron never misses them."

In autumn, when the shooting season opened, he invited his friends as he
had done formerly, and loved to hear them firing in the distance. He
counted the shots and was pleased when they followed each other rapidly.
And in the evening he made each guest give a faithful account of his day.
They remained three hours at table telling about their sport.

They were strange and improbable adventures in which the romancing spirit
of the sportsmen delighted. Some of them were memorable stories and were
repeated regularly. The story of a rabbit that little Vicomte de Bourril
had missed in his vestibule convulsed them with laughter each year anew.
Every five minutes a fresh speaker would say:

"I heard 'birr! birr!' and a magnificent covey rose at ten paces from me.
I aimed. Pif! paf! and I saw a shower, a veritable shower of birds. There
were seven of them!"

And they all went into raptures, amazed, but reciprocally credulous.

But there was an old custom in the house called "The Story of the Snipe."

Whenever this queen of birds was in season the same ceremony took place
at each dinner. As they worshipped this incomparable bird, each guest ate
one every evening, but the heads were all left in the dish.

Then the baron, acting the part of a bishop, had a plate brought to him
containing a little fat, and he carefully anointed the precious heads,
holding them by the tip of their slender, needle-like beak. A lighted
candle was placed beside him and everyone was silent in an anxiety of
expectation.

Then he took one of the heads thus prepared, stuck a pin through it and
stuck the pin on a cork, keeping the whole contrivance steady by means of
little crossed sticks, and carefully placed this object on the neck of a
bottle in the manner of a tourniquet.

All the guests counted simultaneously in a loud tone--

"One-two-three."

And the baron with a fillip of the finger made this toy whirl round.

The guest to whom the long beak pointed when the head stopped became the
possessor of all the heads, a feast fit for a king, which made his
neighbors look askance.

He took them one by one and toasted them over the candle. The grease
sputtered, the roasting flesh smoked and the lucky winner ate the head,
holding it by the beak and uttering