excellent health, whose name was Madame Berthe Vilers, and, accordingly,
she was invited to spend a month at the château. She was very dull at
home, and was very glad to come; she was lively and active, and Monsieur
de Coutelier took her fancy immediately. She amused herself with him as
if he had been a living toy, and spent hours in asking him slyly about
the sentiments of rabbits and the machinations of foxes, and he gravely
distinguished between the various ways of looking at things which
different animals had, and ascribed plans and subtle arguments to them,
just as he did to men of his acquaintance.

The attention she paid him, delighted him, and one evening, to show his
esteem for her, he asked her to go out shooting with him, which he had
never done to any woman before, and the invitation appeared so funny to
her that she accepted it.

It was quite an amusement for them to fit her out; everybody offered her
something, and she came out in a sort of short riding habit, with boots
and men's breeches, a short petticoat, a velvet jacket, which was too
tight for her across the chest, and a huntsman's black velvet cap.

The Baron seemed as excited as if he were going to fire his first shot.
He minutely explained to her the direction of the wind, and how different
dogs worked. Then he took her into a field, and followed her as anxiously
as a nurse does when her charge is trying to walk for the first time.

Medor soon made a point, and stopped with his tail out stiff and one paw
up, and the Baron, standing behind his pupil, was trembling like a leaf,
and whispered:

"Look out, they are par ... par ... partridges." And almost before he had