be in time to dine with the others. Jump, marquis! there, that's
right! why, you can skip across a stubble-field like a deer!"

These words were said by a huntsman peacefully seated at the edge of
the forest of Ile-Adam, who was finishing an Havana cigar while
waiting for his companion, who had lost his way in the tangled
underbrush of the wood. At his side four panting dogs were watching,
as he did, the personage he addressed. To understand how sarcastic
were these exhortations, repeated at intervals, we should state that
the approaching huntsman was a stout little man whose protuberant
stomach was the evidence of a truly ministerial "embonpoint." He was
struggling painfully across the furrows of a vast wheat-field recently
harvested, the stubble of which considerably impeded him; while to add
to his other miseries the sun's rays, striking obliquely on his face,
collected an abundance of drops of perspiration. Absorbed in the
effort to maintain his equilibrium, he leaned, now forward, now back,
in close imitation of the pitching of a carriage when violently
jolted. The weather looked threatening. Though several spaces of blue
sky still parted the thick black clouds toward the horizon, a flock of
fleecy vapors were advancing with great rapidity and drawing a light
gray curtain from east to west. As the wind was acting only on the
upper region of the air, the atmosphere below it pressed down the hot
vapors of the earth. Surrounded by masses of tall trees, the valley
through which the hunter struggled felt like a furnace. Parched and
silent, the forest seemed thirsty. The birds, even the insects, were
voiceless; the tree-tops scarcely waved. Those persons who may still
remember the summer of 1819 can imagine the woes of the poor deputy,
who was struggling along, drenched in sweat, to regain his mocking
friend. The latter, while smoking his cigar, had calculated from the
position of the sun that it must be about five in the afternoon.