ting point in the chase. The boar seemed
determined to make a desperate defence. The dogs, excited by a run of
more than three hours, rushed on it with a fury which increased the
shouts and the oaths of the King.

All the hunters formed a circle, the King somewhat in advance, behind
him the Duc d'Alencon armed with a musket, and Henry, who had nothing
but his simple hunting knife.

The Duc d'Alencon unfastened his musket and lighted the match. Henry
moved his knife in its sheath.

As to the Duc de Guise, disdainful of all the details of hunting, he
stood somewhat apart from the others with his gentlemen. The women,
gathered together in a group, formed a counterpart to that of the duke.

Everyone who was anything of a hunter stood with eyes fixed on the
animal in anxious expectation.

To one side an outrider was endeavoring to restrain the King's two
mastiffs, which, encased in their coats of mail, were waiting to take
the boar by the ears, howling and jumping about in such a manner that
every instant one might think they would burst their chains.

The boar made a wonderful resistance. Attacked at once by forty or more
dogs, which enveloped it like a roaring tide, which covered it by their
motley carpet, which on all sides was striving to reach its skin,
wrinkled with bristles, at each blow of its snout it hurled a dog ten
feet in the air. The dogs fell back, torn to pieces, and, with entrails
dragging, at once returned to the fray. Charles, with hair on end,
bloodshot eyes, and inflated nostrils, leaned over the neck of his
dripping horse shouting furious "halloos!"

In less than ten minutes twenty dogs were out of the fight.

"The mastiffs!" cried Charles; "the mastiffs!"

At this shout the outrider opened the carbine-swivels of the leashes,
and the two bloodhounds rushed into the midst of the carnage,
overturning everything, scattering everything, making a way with their
coats of mail to the animal, which they seized by the ear.

The boar, knowing that it was caught, clinched its teeth both from rage
and pain.

"Bravo, Duredent! Bravo, Risquetout!" cried Charles. "Courage, dogs! A
spear! a spear!"

"Do you not want my musket?" said the Duc d'Alencon.

"No," cried the King, "no; one cannot feel a bullet when he shoots;
there is no fun in it; but one can feel a spear. A spear! a spear!"

They handed the King a hunting spear hardened by fire and armed with a
steel point.

"Take care, brother!" cried Ma