r, which sprang
after it.

Hunting was Charles' chief passion. Scarcely had the animal crossed the
road before he started after it, followed by the Duc d'Alencon and
Henry, to whom a sign had indicated that he must not leave Charles.

The rest of the hunters followed the King.

At the time of which we are writing, the royal forests were far from
being what they are to-day, great parks intersected by carriage roads.
Then traffic was almost wanting. Kings had not yet conceived the idea of
being merchants, and of dividing their woods into fellings, copses, and
forests. The trees, planted, not by learned foresters, but by the hand
of God, who threw the grain to the will of the winds, were not arranged
in quincunxes, but grew as they pleased, as they do to-day in any
virginal forest of America. In short, a forest in those days was a den
of the wild boar, the stag, the wolf, and robbers; and a dozen paths
starting from one point starred that of Bondy, surrounded by a circular
road as the circle of a wheel surrounds its fellies.

To carry the comparison further, the nave would not be a bad
representation of the single point where the parties meet in the centre
of the wood, where the wandering hunters rally to start out again
towards the point where the lost animal again appears.

At the end of a quarter of an hour there happened what always happens in
such cases. Insurmountable obstacles rose in the path of the hunters,
the cries of the dogs were lost in the distance, and the King returned
to the meeting-place cursing and swearing as was his habit.

"Well, D'Alencon! Well, Henriot!" said he, "there you are, by Heaven, as
calm and unruffled as nuns following their abbess. That is not hunting.
Why, D'Alencon, you look as though you had just stepped out of a
band-box, and you are so saturated with perfumery that if you were to
pass between the boar and my dogs, you might put them off the scent. And
you, Henry, where is your spear, your musket? Let us see!"

"Sire," said Henry, "of what use is a musket? I know that your Majesty
likes to shoot the beast when the dogs have caught it. As to a spear, I
am clumsy enough with this weapon, which is not much used among our
mountains, where we hunt the bear with a simple dagger."

"By Heavens, Henry, when you return to your Pyrenees you will have to
send me a whole cartload of bears. It must be a pretty hunt that is
carried on at such close quarters with an animal which might stran