Manicamp looked round him; he saw only D’Artagnan leaning with his back against the wainscot—D’Artagnan, calm, kind, and good-natured as usual—and Saint-Aignan whom he had accompanied, and who still leaned over the king’s armchair with an expression of countenance equally full of good feeling. He determined, therefore, to speak out. “Your majesty is perfectly aware,” he said, “that accidents are very frequent in hunting.”
“In hunting, do you say?”
“I mean, sire, when an animal is brought to bay.”
“Ah, ah!” said the king, “it was when the animal was brought to bay, then, that the accident happened?”
“Alas! sire, unhappily it was.”
The king paused for a moment before he said: “What animal was being hunted?”
“A wild boar, sire.”
“And what could possibly have possessed De Guiche to go to a wild boar-hunt by himself; that is but a clownish idea of sport, only fit for that class of people who, unlike the Marechal de Gramont, have no dogs and huntsmen, to hunt as gentlemen should do.”
Manicamp shrugged his shoulders. “Youth is very rash,” he said, sententiously.
“Well, go on,” said the king.