carrying blood to the earth. You fished in them for crawfish, trout and
eels. Divine happiness! You could bathe in places and you often found
snipe among the high grass which grew along the borders of these small
water courses.

I was stepping along light as a goat, watching my two dogs running ahead
of me, Serval, a hundred metres to my right, was beating a field of
lucerne. I turned round by the thicket which forms the boundary of the
wood of Sandres and I saw a cottage in ruins.

Suddenly I remembered it as I had seen it the last time, in 1869, neat,
covered with vines, with chickens before the door. What is sadder than a
dead house, with its skeleton standing bare and sinister?

I also recalled that inside its doors, after a very tiring day, the good
woman had given me a glass of wine to drink and that Serval had told me
the history of its people. The father, an old poacher, had been killed by
the gendarmes. The son, whom I had once seen, was a tall, dry fellow who
also passed for a fierce slayer of game. People called them "Les
Sauvage."

Was that a name or a nickname?

I called to Serval. He came up with his long strides like a crane.

I asked him:

"What's become of those people?"

This was his story: