d
huntsman, Baron Heintze Weissenrode, after receiving the emperor's
final instructions, selects a dozen members of the party, and conducts
them to the dining-room, where they take their places around the
table, each armed with a wooden spoon of a different size from those
of his neighbors.

At a given signal the huntsman in charge of the imperial pack of
boar-hounds, who has been stationed at the entrance leading into the
dining-room, sounds the "view-halloo!" on his horn, and immediately
every one of the wooden spoons is rubbed up and down the oaken table
in a manner that produces a sound similar to that of the noise made
by a pack in full pursuit. The person about to be initiated is then
seized and blindfolded, after which the doors are thrown open, and he
is carried into the dining-room, and laid upon the table athwart the
chalk lines. The emperor immediately draws his short hunting-knife,
and after making several mystic passes with it in the air, strikes the
prostrate body of the neophyte a smart blow with the flat of the broad
blade. The huntsman toots forth the signal of "dead! dead!" which is
used to call the pack off the quarry, and the new-fledged "weide-man"
is permitted to struggle off the table and onto the ground.

I may add that the emperor's blow with the hunting-knife is not the
only one which the neophyte receives while stretched on the table on
his face, nor does it constitute the sum total of the initiation, but
only the conclusion thereof. Indeed, there is sometimes a good deal
of rough horse-play on these occasions, in which the emperor, who
delights therein, takes a prominent part.

The boar hunt on the following day partakes of the nature of the
chamois drives already described, the only difference being that the
beaters are assisted in their work by a carefully trained pack of
boar-hounds, which are accustomed to obey the horn signals of the
huntsman in charge, and are of much service in driving the quarry from
its lair in the dense brush and underwood.

Another difference is that the shooting parties, instead of firing in
the direction of the drivers, are under the strictest orders only
to fire away from them; that is to say, the hunters are practically
forced to wait until the wild boar rushes past before their rifles may
be levelled. Of course, it sometimes happens that the boar, instead
of charging past, charges directly at some member of the party in the
fiercest and most dangerous man