n of the apple trees made black shadows at
their feet, while in the distance the fields gleamed, covered with the
ripe corn. But as he was leaning out, listening to every sound in the
still night, two bare arms were put round his neck, and his wife
whispered, trying to pull him back: "Do leave them alone; it has nothing
to do with you. Come to bed."

He turned round, put his arms round her, and drew her toward him, but
just as he was laying her on the 'bed, which yielded beneath her weight,
they heard another report, considerably nearer this time, and Jean,
giving way to his tumultuous rage, swore aloud: "Damn it! They will think
I do not go out and see what it is because of you! Wait, wait a few
minutes!" He put on his shoes again, took down his gun, which was always
hanging within reach against the wall, and, as his wife threw herself on
her knees in her terror, imploring him not to go, he hastily freed
himself, ran to the window and jumped into the yard.

She waited one hour, two hours, until daybreak, but her husband did not
return. Then she lost her head, aroused the house, related how angry Jean
was, and said that he had gone after the poachers, and immediately all
the male farm-servants, even the boys, went in search of their master.
They found him two leagues from the farm, tied hand and foot, half dead
with rage, his gun broken, his trousers turned inside out, and with three
dead hares hanging round his neck, and a placard on his chest with these
words: "Who goes on the chase loses his place."

In later years, when he used to tell this story of his wedding night, he
usually added: "Ah! as far as a joke went it was a good joke. They caught
me in a snare, as if I had been a rabbit, the dirty brutes, and they
shoved my head into a bag. But if I can only catch them some day they had
better look out for themselves!"

That is how they amuse themselves in Normandy on a wedding day.

FATHER MATTHEW

We had just left Rouen and were galloping along the road to Jumieges. The
light carriage flew along across the level country. Presently the horse
slackened his pace to walk up the hill of Cantelen.

One sees there one of the most magnificent views in the world. Behind us
lay Rouen, the city of churches, with its Gothic belfries, sculptured
like ivory trinkets; before us Saint Sever, the manufacturing suburb,
whose thousands of smoking chimneys rise amid the expanse of sky,
opposite the thousand sacred steeples