Being Of An Inquiring Turn Of Mind,
I Listened With Awe To This Physiological Revelation, And
With Chastened And Depressed Spirits Made A Mental Note Of
Our National Calamity.
Privately I fancied that the mottled
and spasmodic legs of Achille - whom she carried in her arms
- or at least so much of the infant Pelides' legs as were not
enveloped in a napkin, gave every promise of refuting her
generalisation.
One of my amusements was to set brick traps for small birds.
At Holkham in the winter time, by baiting with a few grains
of corn, I and my brothers used, in this way, to capture
robins, hedge-sparrows, and tits. Not far from the chateau
was a large osier bed, resorted to by flocks of the common
sparrow. Here I set my traps. But it being summer time, and
(as I complained when twitted with want of success) French
birds being too stupid to know what the traps were for, I
never caught a feather. Now this osier bed was a favourite
game covert for the sportsmen of the chateau; and what was my
delight and astonishment when one morning I found a dead hare
with its head under the fallen brick of my trap. How
triumphantly I dragged it home, and showed it to Rose and
Auguste, - who more than the rest had 'mocked themselves' of
my traps, and then carried it in my arms, all bloody as it
was (I could not make out how both its hind legs were broken)
into the salon to show it to the old Marquise.
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