As a rule, Marcotte bore with admirable patience the insults which the Baron was in the habit of lavishing upon everybody about him at critical moments of the chase, but this word trash, applied to his dogs, was more than his habitual long-suffering could bear, and drawing himself up to his full height, he answered vehemently, “Trash, my Lord? my dogs worthless trash! dogs that have brought down an old wolf after such a furious run that the best horse in your stable was foundered! my dogs trash!”
“Yes, trash, worthless trash, I say it again, Marcotte. Only trash would stop at a check like that, after hunting one wretched buck so many hours on end.”
“My Lord,” answered Marcotte, in a tone of mingled dignity and sorrow, “My Lord, say that it is my fault, call me a fool, a blockhead, a scoundrel, a blackguard, an idiot; insult me in my own person, or in that of my wife, of my children, and it is nothing to me; but for the sake of all my past services to you, do not attack me in my office of chief pricker, do not insult your dogs.”
“How do you account for their silence, then? tell me that! How do you account for it? I am quite willing to hear what you have to say, and I am listening.”
“I cannot explain it any more than you can, my Lord; the damned animal must have flown into the clouds or disappeared in the bowels of the earth.”
“What nonsense are you talking!” exclaimed the Baron—“do you want to make out that the deer has burrowed like a rabbit, or risen from the ground like a grouse?”
“My Lord, I meant it only as a manner of speech. What is a truth, what is the fact, is that there is some witchcraft behind all this. As sure as it is now daylight, my dogs, every one of them, lay down at the same moment, suddenly, without an instant hesitation. Ask anybody who was near them at the time. And now they are not even trying to recover the scent, but there they lie flat on the ground like so many stags in their lair. I ask you, is it natural?”
“Thrash them, man! thrash them, then,” cried the Baron, “flay the skin off their backs; there is nothing like it for driving out the evil spirit.”
And the Baron was going forward to emphasise with a few blows from his own whip the exorcisms which Marcotte, according to his orders, was distributing among the poor beasts, when Engoulevent, hat in hand, drew near to the Baron and timidly laid his hand on the horse’s bridle.
“My Lord,” said the keeper of the kennel, “I think I have just discovered a cuckoo in that tree who may perhaps be able to give us some explanation of what has happened.”