M. Deviolaine shrugged his shoulders.
"Shrug your shoulders to your heart's content, M. Deviolaine,—it shall be as I tell you. These wretched boars have been the cause of my uncle's death, and I should not feel as though I were killing them if I did it with a carbine or a musket—but with my knife it is a different matter! Besides, don't they cut pigs' throats with a knife? and what else is a boar but a pig?"
"Well," said M. Deviolaine, who knew he would never get the last word, "as you will not listen to anything you must be left to go your own way."
"Yes, yes; leave me to my own devices, M. l'inspecteur, and you shall see!"
"To the chase! to the chase, gentlemen!" cried the inspector.
The boar was in the preserve of a man named Lajeunesse, and we attacked it pretty soon, as the rendezvous was not more than five hundred steps from the lair.
But this time, although the boar, which was a three-year old, was hit four or five times, it led us a fine dance, and only after four or five hours' chase did it desire to turn round upon the dogs.
Everybody knows that, no matter how tired one may be, so tired as hardly to be able to stand, all fatigue is forgotten directly the boar turns at bay. We had hunted altogether, taking into account the ins and outs, some ten leagues. But, directly we recognised from the dogs' voices that they were at close quarters with the animal, each of us revived, and began to run towards the direction whence the barking was heard.
It sounded from out a young spinney of eight or ten years' standing—that is to say, a thicket of about ten or a dozen feet high, wherein the drama was being acted. As we drew nearer the sound increased, and from time to time we could see a dog flung above the young trees by a creature's tusks, its four paws in mid air, howling madly, but renewing the attack on the boar directly it touched the ground again. At last we reached a kind of clearing: the animal was pinned, as in a fortress, by the branches of a large tree which a storm had blown down. Twenty to thirty dogs were attacking it all at the same time; ten or a dozen of them were hurt, several had their stomachs ripped open. But, game beasts as they were, they did not notice their pain; they returned to the fight, with their insides hanging out, trampling on them. It was a magnificent and yet a horrible spectacle!