e _piqueur_ was not mistaken. As the king advanced he heard the baying
of the pack, which was now composed of more than sixty dogs, fresh relays
having been slipped at different places near which the boar had passed. At
last Charles caught a second glimpse of the animal, and, profiting by the
height of the adjacent trees, which enabled him to ride beneath their
branches, he turned into the wood, sounding his horn with all his
strength. The princes followed him for some time, but the king had so
vigorous a horse, and, carried away by his eagerness, he dashed over such
steep and broken ground, and through such dense thickets, that first the
ladies, then the Duke of Guise and his gentlemen, and at last the two
princes, were forced to abandon him. All the hunters therefore, with the
exception of Charles and a few _piqueurs_, found themselves reassembled at
the _carrefour_. D'Alencon and Henry were standing near each other in a
long alley. At about a hundred paces from them the Duke of Guise had
halted, with his retinue of twenty or thirty gentlemen, who were armed, it
might have been thought, rather for the battle-field than the
hunting-ground. The ladies were in the _carrefour_ itself.

"Would it not seem," said the Duke of Alencon to Henry, glancing at the
Duke of Guise with the corner of his eye, "that yonder man with his
steel-clad escort is the true king? He does not even vouchsafe a glance to
us poor princes."

"Why should he treat us better than our own relations do?" replied Henry.
"Are we not, you and I, prisoners at the court of France, hostages for our
party?"

The Duke Francis started, and looked at Henry as if to provoke a further
explanation; but Henry had gone further than was his wont, and he remained
silent.

"What do you mean, Henry?" enquired the duke, evidently vexed that his
brother-in-law, by his taciturnity, compelled him to put the question.

"I mean, brother," answered Henry, "that those armed men who seem so
careful not to lose sight of us, have quite the appearance of guards
charged to prevent us from escaping."

"Escaping! Why? How?" cried D'Alencon, with a well-feigned air of surprise
and simplicity.

"You have a magnificent jennet there, Francis," said Henry, following up
the subject, whilst appearing to change the conversation. "I am sure he
would get over seven leagues in an hour, and twenty from now till noon. It
is a fine day for a ride. Look at that cross-road--how level and pleasan