The young imp did not need to be told twice.  In the twinkling of an eye he threw his arms around the tree, and reached the fork.  When there, he uttered an exclamation.

“Well?” cried the collector; impatiently, “throw him down!”

“I can’t, Monsieur,” replied the boy, “the squirrel is fastened by a wire.”  Then the laughter burst forth more boisterously than before.

“A wire, you young rascal!  Are you making fun of me?” shouted Boucheseiche, “come down this moment!”

“Here he is, Monsieur,” replied the lad, throwing himself down with the squirrel which he tossed at the collector’s feet.

When Boucheseiche verified the fact that the squirrel was a stuffed specimen, he gave a resounding oath.

“In the name of—–! who is the miscreant that has perpetrated this joke?”

No one could reply for laughing.  Then ironical cheers burst forth from all sides.

“Brave Boucheseiche!  That’s a kind of game one doesn’t often get hold of!”

“We never shall see any more of that kind!”

“Let us carry Boucheseiche in triumph!”

And so they went on, marching around the tree.  Arbillot seized a slip of ivy and crowned Boucheseiche, while all the others clapped their hands and capered in front of the collector, who, at last, being a good fellow at heart, joined in the laugh at his own expense.

Julien de Buxieres alone could not share the general hilarity.  The uproar caused by this simple joke did not even chase the frown from his brow.  He was provoked at not being able to bring himself within the diapason of this somewhat vulgar gayety:  he was aware that his melancholy countenance, his black clothes, his want of sympathy jarred unpleasantly on the other jovial guests.  He did not intend any longer to play the part of a killjoy.  Without saying anything to Claudet, therefore, he waited until the huntsmen had scattered in the brushwood, and then, diving into a trench, in an opposite direction, he gave them all the slip, and turned in the direction of Planche-au-Vacher.

As he walked slowly, treading under foot the dry frosty leaves, he reflected how the monotonous crackling of this foliage, once so full of life, now withered and rendered brittle by the frost, seemed to represent his own deterioration of feeling.  It was a sad and suitable accompaniment of his own gloomy thoughts.

He was deeply mortified at the sorry figure he had presented at the breakfast-table.  He acknowledged sorrowfully to himself that, at twenty-eight years of age, he was less young and less really alive than all these country squires, although all, except Claudet, had passed their fortieth year.  Having missed his season of childhood, was he also doomed to have no youth?  Others found delight in the most ordinary amusements, why, to him, did life seem so insipid and colorless?

Why was he so unfortunately constituted that all human joys lost their sweetness as soon as he opened his heart to them?  Nothing made any powerful impression on him; everything that happened seemed to be a perpetual reiteration, a song sung for the hundredth time, a story a hundred times related.