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)
Louis XI., Charles VIII., and Louis XII. often hunted thus. The leopards, which formed a part of the royal venery, were kept in an enclosure of the Castle of Amboise, which still exists near the gate _des Lions_, so called, no doubt, on account of these sporting and carnivorous animals being mistaken for lions by the common people. There, were, however, always lions in the menageries of the kings of France.