struggled
felt like a furnace. Parched and silent, the forest seemed thirsty. The
birds, even the insects, were voiceless; the tree-tops scarcely waved.
Those persons who may still remember the summer of 1819 can imagine the
woes of the poor deputy, who was struggling along, drenched in sweat,
to regain his mocking friend. The latter, while smoking his cigar, had
calculated from the position of the sun that it must be about five in
the afternoon.

"Where the devil are we?" said the stout huntsman, mopping his
forehead and leaning against the trunk of a tree nearly opposite to
his companion, for he felt unequal to the effort of leaping the ditch
between them.

"That's for me to ask you," said the other, laughing, as he lay among
the tall brown brake which crowned the bank. Then, throwing the end of
his cigar into the ditch, he cried out vehemently: "I swear by Saint
Hubert that never again will I trust myself in unknown territory with a
statesman, though he be, like you, my dear d'Albon, a college mate."

"But, Philippe, have you forgotten your French? Or have you left your
wits in Siberia?" replied the stout man, casting a sorrowfully comic
look at a sign-post about a hundred feet away.

"True, true," cried Philippe, seizing his gun and springing with a bound
into the field and thence to the post. "This way, d'Albon, this way,"
he called back to his friend, pointing to a broad paved path and reading
aloud the sign: "'From Baillet to Ile-Adam.' We shall certainly find
the path to Cassan, which must branch from this one between here and
Ile-Adam."

"You are right, colonel," said Monsieur d'Albon, replacing upon his head
the cap with which he had been fanning himself.

"Forward then, my respectable privy councillor," replied Colonel
Philippe, whistling to the dogs, who seemed more willing to obey him
than the public functionary to whom they belonged.

"Are you aware, marquis," said the jeering soldier, "that we still have
six miles to go? That village over there must be Baillet."

"Good heavens!" cried the marquis, "go to Cassan if you must, but you'll
go alone. I prefer to stay here, in spite of the coming storm, and
wait for the horse you can send me from the chateau. You've played me a
trick, Sucy. We were to have had a nice little hunt not far from Cassan,
and beaten the coverts I know. Instead of that, you have kept me running
like a hare since four o'clock this morning, and all I've had for
breakfast is a