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'Alençon.
"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 Marguerite.