sub-prefect told me there wasn't one o' them museums that had the like;
but he knows everything, our sub-prefect,--no fool he! If I hunt the
otter, he, M'sieur des Lupeaulx, hunts Mademoiselle Gaubertin, who has
a fine white 'dot' on her back. Come now, my good gentleman, if I may
make so bold, plunge into the middle of the Avonne and get to that
stone down there. If we head the otter off, it will come down stream;
for just see their slyness, the beggars! they always go above their
burrow to feed, for, once full of fish, they know they can easily
drift down, the sly things! Ha! if I'd been trained in their school I
should be living now on an income; but I was a long time finding out
that you must go up stream very early in the morning if you want to
bag the game before others. Well, somebody threw a spell over me when
I was born. However, we three together ought to be slyer than the
otter."

"How so, my old necromancer?"

"Why, bless you! we are as stupid as the beasts, and so we come to
understand the beasts. Now, see, this is what we'll do. When the otter
wants to get home Mouche and I'll frighten it here, and you'll
frighten it over there; frightened by us and frightened by you it will
jump on the bank, and when it takes to earth, it is lost! It can't
run; it has web feet for swimming. Ho, ho! it will make you laugh,
such floundering! you don't know whether you are fishing or hunting!
The general up at Les Aigues, I have known him to stay here three days
running, he was so bent on getting an otter."

Blondet, armed with a branch cut for him by the old man, who requested
him to whip the water with it when he called to him, planted himself
in the middle of the river by jumping from stone to stone.