s seemed to tremble, and
suddenly the wild boar broke through the bushes, covered with blood, and
trying to shake off the hounds who had fastened onto him, and the baron,
uttering a shout of triumph, exclaimed: "Let him who loves me, follow
me!" And he disappeared in the copse, as if the wood had swallowed him
up.

When she reached an open glade a few minutes later, he was just getting
up, covered with mud, his coat torn, and his hands bloody, while the
brute was lying stretched out at full length, with the baron's hunting
knife driven into its shoulder up to the hilt.

The quarry was cut at night by torchlight. It was a warm and dull
evening, and the wan moon threw a yellow light onto the torches which
made the night misty with their resinous smoke. The hounds devoured the
wild boar's stinking entrails, and snarled and fought for them, while
the prickers and the gentlemen, standing in a circle round the spoil,
blew their horns as loud as they could. The flourish of the
hunting-horns resounded beyond the woods on that still night and was
repeated by the echoes of the distant valleys, awaking the timid stags,
rousing the yelping foxes, and disturbing the little rabbits in their
gambols at the edge of the rides.

The frightened night-birds flew over the eager pack of hounds, while the
women, who were moved by all these gentle and violent things, leaned
rather heavily on the men's arms; and turned aside into the forest
rides, before the hounds had finished their meal, and Madame
d'Avancelles, feeling languid after that day of fatigue and tenderness,
said to the baron: "Will you take a turn in the park, my friend?" And
without replying, but trembling and nervous, he went with her, and
immediately they kissed each other. They walked slowly under the almost
leafless trees through which the moonbeams filtered, and their love,
their desires, their longing for a closer embrace became so vehement,
that they nearly yielded to it at the foot of a tree.

The horns were not sounding any longer, and the tired hounds were
sleeping in the kennels. "Let us return," the young woman said, and they
went back.

When they got to the chateau and before they went in, she said in a weak
voice: "I am so tired that I shall go to bed, my friend." And as he
opened his arms for a last kiss, she ran away, saying as a last good-bye:
"No.... I am going to sleep.... Let him who loves me follow me!"

An hour later, when the whole silent chateau see