and a fox broke near us,
bounding along at full speed, when Adolphe, his face as pale as his
cambric shirt, muttered, as he nearly fell upon his knees--"Oh!
Paris--oh! Chevet--oh! Boulevard des Italiens--I shall never see ye
more!"

"Why, Adolphe! what the deuce is the matter with you? in the name of
France, be a man. If my time is to be taken up with looking after you, I
shall be in a nice situation. No nonsense--no useless fears? Do you, or
do you not feel able to take part in the approaching drama?"

"No, I don't--I only just feel able to get up this tree."

"What! are you in such a funk as all that? Why, what a poor creature you
must be! You are the very incarnation of fear!"

"Fear? I have no fear. Who says that I have? I don't know how it is, but
I certainly do feel something--a sort of qualm, something like
sea-sickness--everything seems going round--no doubt a sudden
indisposition--such a thing might happen to the bravest man--Napoleon,
they say, was bilious at Borodino. We part for a few minutes only, dear
friend; I shall ascend the oak--an English king once did the same."

Another blast of the keeper's horn was now heard on the left.

"What does that mean?" cried Adolphe, one leg in the air.

"That signifies, the boar is making right for us."

"Does it? Then I am up;" and, with the agility of a cat, he was in an
instant safely lodged in the branches. "Ah! my friend! how different it
feels up here--the sickness is quite gone off, hand me the gun."

"In the name of Fortune," said I, "hold your coward tongue--here's the
boar;" for I could now hear his snorting and loud breathing in the copse
hard by.

"Do you hear him?" said Adolphe from his perch, his cheeks as green as
the leaves which covered him.

"Hear him?" I exclaimed, "yes, I partly see him. What a monster! How he
tears the ground!--how he bleeds and gnaws his burning wounds!--every
hair of his back stands up, smoke and perspiration flow from his
nostrils, and his eyes, glaring with agony and concentrated rage, look
as if they would start from their sockets!"

On came the beaters, and in a few minutes the panting beast burst from
his thicket, and rushed across the open; my eye was on every movement,
and, firing both barrels, the contents struck him full in front. It was
his death-blow, but the vital principle was yet unsubdued; and,
summoning up all his dying energies--those which despair alone can
give--he came at me with a force that I cou