as well as the cottages searched, and any net, engine, or sporting arm found was immediately destroyed.  His only son, the heir to the throne, was not exempted from these laws.  Shut up in the Castle of Amboise, he had no permission to leave it, for it was the will of the King that the young prince should remain ignorant of the noble exercises of chivalry.  One day the Dauphin prayed his governor, M. du Bouchage, with so much earnestness to give him an idea of hunting, that this noble consented to make an excursion into the neighbouring wood with him.  The King, however, managed to find it out, and Du Bouchage had great difficulty in keeping his head on his shoulders.

One of the best ways of pleasing Louis XI. was to offer him some present relating to his favourite pastime, either pointers, hounds, falcons, or varlets who were adepts in the art of venery or hawking (Figs. 139 and 140).  When the cunning monarch became old and infirm, in order to make his enemies believe that he was still young and vigorous, he sent messengers everywhere, even to the most remote countries, to purchase horses, dogs, and falcons, for which, according to Comines, he paid large sums (Fig. 141).

On his death, the young prince, Charles VIII., succeeded him, and he seems to have had an innate taste for hunting, and soon made up for lost time and the privation to which his father had subjected him.  He hunted daily, and generously allowed the nobles to do the same.  It is scarcely necessary to say that these were not slow in indulging in the privilege thus restored to them, and which was one of their most ancient pastimes and occupations; for it must be remembered that, in those days of small intellectual culture, hunting must have been a great, if not at times the only, resource against idleness and the monotony of country life.

Everything which related to sport again became the fashion amongst the youth of the nobility, and their chief occupation when not engaged in war.  They continued as formerly to invent every sort of sporting device.  For example, they obtained from other countries traps, engines, and hunting-weapons; they introduced into France at great expense foreign animals, which they took great pains in naturalising as game or in training as auxiliaries in hunting.  After having imported the reindeer from Lapland, which did not succeed in their temperate climate, and the pheasant from Tartary, with which they stocked the woods, they imported with greater success the panther and the leopard from Africa, which were used for furred game as the hawk was for feathered game.  The mode of hunting with these animals was as follows:  The sportsmen, preceded by their dogs, rode across country, each with a leopard sitting behind him on his saddle.  When the dogs had started the game the leopard jumped off the saddle and sprang after it, and as soon as it was caught the hunters threw the leopard a piece of raw flesh, for which he gave up the prey and remounted behind his master (Fig. 142)