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a fat pigeon sunning itself on the top of the wall. He paused to
gaze at it; where he stood the rampart was cracked and a piece of
stone was near at hand; he gave his arm a jerk and the well-aimed
missile struck the bird squarely, sending it straight into the
moat below.

He sprang after it, unmindful of the brambles, and ferreted around
the bushes with the litheness of a young dog.

The pigeon hung with broken wings in the branches of a privet
hedge.

The persistence of its life irritated the boy. He began to
strangle it, and its convulsions made his heart beat quicker, and
filled him with a wild, tumultuous voluptuousness, the last throb
of its heart making him feel like fainting.

At supper that night, his father declared that at his age a boy
should begin to hunt; and he arose and brought forth an old
writing-book which contained, in questions and answers, everything
pertaining to the pastime. In it, a master showed a supposed pupil
how to train dogs and falcons, lay traps, recognise a stag by its
fumets, and a fox or a wolf by footprints. He also taught the best
way of discovering their tracks, how to start them, where their
refuges are usually to be found, what winds are the most
favourable, and further enumerated the various cries, and the
rules of the quarry.

When Julian was able to recite all these things by heart, his
father made up a pack of hounds for him. There were twenty-four
greyhounds of Barbary, speedier than gazelles, but liable to get
out of temper; seventeen couples of Breton dogs, great barkers,
with broad chests and russet coats flecked with white. For
wild-boar hunting and perilous doublings, there were forty
boarhounds as hairy as bears.

The red mastiffs of Tartary, almost as large as donkeys, with
broad backs and straight legs, were destined for the pursuit of
the wild bull. The black coats of the spaniels shone like satin;
the barking of the setters equalled that of the beagles. In a
special enclosure were eight growling bloodhounds that tugged at
their chains and rolled their eyes, and these dogs leaped at men's
throats and were not afraid even of lions.

All ate wheat bread, drank from marble troughs, and had
high-sounding names.

Perhaps the falconry surpassed the pack; for the master of the
castle, by paying great sums of money, had secured Caucasian
hawks, Babylonian sakers, German gerfalcons, and pilgrim falcons
captured on the cliffs edging the cold seas, in distant l