: Alexandre Dumas
: The Wolf-Leader
: Books on Demand
: 9782322436590
: 1
: CHF 2.50
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: Fantasy
: English
: 341
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May 3ist, 1856, 2 The Wolf-L eader is to be associated in conception with the group of romances which Dumas wrote at Brussels between the years 1852 and 1854, tnat sto say, after his financial failure and the consequent defection of his collaborator Maquet, and before his return to Paris to found his journal Le Mousquetaire. Like Conscience VI nnocent and Catherine Blum, which date from that period of exile, the present story was inspired by reminiscences of our authors native place Villers Cotterets, in the department of the A isne. In The Wolf-L eader Dumas, however, allows his imagination and fancy full play. Using a legend told to him nearly half a century before, conjuring up the scenes of his boyhood, and calling into requisition his wonderful gift of improvisa tion, he contrives in the happiest way to weave a romance in which are combined a weird tale of diablerie and continual delightful glimpses of forest life. Terror, wood-craft, and humour could not be more felicitously intermingled. The reader, while kept under the spell of the main theme of the story, experiences all the charm of an open-air life in the great forest of Villers-C otterets the forest in which the little town seemed to occupy a small clearing, and into which the boy Alexandre occasionally escaped for days together from the irksome routine of the school or from the hands of relatives who wanted to make a priest of him. Thus Dumas, the most impressionable of men, all his life remained grateful to the forest for the poetic fancies derived from its beauty and the mysteries of its recesses, as well as for the hiding-places it afforded him, and for the game and birds which he soon learnt to shoot and snare there. Listen to his indignation at the destruction of the trees in the neighbouring park.

Alexandre Dumas, père (French for"father", akin to Senior in English), born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was a French writer, best known for his numerous historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world. Many of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne were serialized. Dumas also wrote plays and magazine articles, and was a prolific correspondent. Dumas was of Haitian descent and mixed-race. His father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) to Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and Marie-Cessette Dumas, a black slave. At age 14 Thomas-Alexandre was taken by his father to France, where he was educated in a military academy and entered the military for what became an illustrious career. Dumas's father's aristocratic rank helped young Alexandre Dumas acquire work with Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, then as a writer, finding early success. He became one of the leading authors of the French Romantic Movement, in Paris.

IX


THE meeting-place was on the road leading to Chavigny. Here we found the keepers and some of the huntsmen, and within another ten minutes those who were missing had also joined us. Before five o’clock struck, our number was complete, and then we held a council of war to decide our further proceedings. It was finally arranged that we should first take up our position round the Three Oaks Covert at some considerable distance from it, and then gradually advance so as to form a cordon round it. Everything was to be done with the utmost silence, it being well known that wolves decamp on hearing the slightest noise. Each of us was ordered to look carefully along the path he followed, to make quite sure that the wolf had not left the covert. Meanwhile the field-keeper was holding Mocquet’s hounds in leash.

One by one we took our stand facing the covert, on the spot to which our particular path had conducted us. As it happened, Mocquet and I found ourselves on the north side of the warren, which was parallel with the forest.

Mocquet had rightly said that we should be in the best place, for the wolf would in all probability try and make for the forest, and so would break covert on our side of it.

We took our stand, each in front of an oak tree, fifty paces apart from one another, and then we waited, without moving, and hardly daring to breathe. The dogs on the farther side of the warren were now uncoupled; they gave two short barks, and were then silent. The keeper followed them into the covert, calling halloo as he beat the trees with his stick. But the dogs, their eyes starting out of their heads, their lips drawn back, and their coats bristling, remained as if nailed to the ground. Nothing would induce them to move a step further.

“Halloa, Mocquet!” cried the keeper, “this wolf of yours must be an extra plucky one, Rocador and Tombelle refuse to tackle him.”

But Mocquet was too wise to make any answer, for the sound of his voice would have warned the wolf that there were enemies in that direction.

The keeper went forward, still beating the trees, the two dogs after him cautiously advancing step by step, without a bark, only now and then giving a low growl.

All of a sudden there was a loud exclamation from the keeper, who called out, “I nearly trod on his tail! the wolf! the wolf! Look out, Mocquet, look out!”

And at that moment something came rushing towards us, and the animal leapt out of the covert, passing between us like a flash of lightning. It was an enormous wolf, nearly white with age. Mocquet turned and sent two bullets after him; I saw them bound and rebound along the snow.

“Shoot, shoot!” he called out to me.


Only then did I bring my gun to the shoulder; I took aim, and fired; the wolf made a movement as if he wanted to bite his shoulder.

“We have him! we have him!” cried Mocquet, “the lad has hit his mark! Success to the innocent!”

But the wolf ran on, making straight for Moynat and Mildet, the two best shots in the country round.

Both their first shots were fired at him in the open; the second, after he had entered the forest.

The two first bullets were seen to cross one another, and ran along the ground, sending up spurts of snow; the wolf had escaped them both, but he had no doubt been struck down by the others; that the two keepers who had just fired should miss their aim, was an un-heard of thing. I had seen Moynat kill seventeen snipe one after the other; I had seen Mildet cut a squirrel in two as he was jumping from tree to tree.

The keepers went into the forest after the wolf; we looked anxiously towards the spot where they had disappeared. We saw them reappear, dejected, and shaking their heads.

“Well?” cried Mocquet interrogatively.


“Bah!” answered Mildet, with an impatient movement of his arm, “he’s at Taille-Fontaine by this time.”

“At Taille-Fontaine!” exclaimed Mocquet, completely taken aback. “What! the fools have gone and missed him, then!”

“Well, what of that? you missed him yourself, did you not?”

Mocquet shook his head.


“Well, well, there’s some devilry about this,” he said. “That I should miss him was surprising, but it was perhaps possible; but that Moynat should have shot twice and missed him is not possible, no, I say, no.”

“Nevertheless, so it is, my good Mocquet.”


“Besides, you, you hit him,” he said to me.


“I!... are you sure?”


“We others may well be ashamed to say it. But as sure as my name is Mocquet, you hit the wolf.”

“Well, it’s easy to find out if I did hit him, there would be blood on the snow.—Come, Mocquet, let us run and see.” And suiting the action to the word, I set off running.

“Stop, stop, do not run, whatever you do,” cried Mocquet, clenching his teeth and sta