Extremely obliging as he was, he did enjoy some small popularity and in the end made up for not being a fireman by stuffing, furiously and with great conviction, all the polecats and weasels killed in the surrounding woods. Every family possessed at least one specimen of our cousin’s skill and at that time we could not got into a house without seeing in its place of honour one of these animals, seated on its piece of wood, indulging in flirtacious gestures, generally in the style of squirrels. Owing to a tendency towards the ideal, which the elderly, retired military often display, our cousin adjusted and softened features in the animals corpses which seemed too repellent or fierce.

(Octave Mirbeau, Abbé Jules, trans. Nicoletta Simborowski)