“So,” she said at length, “so you know who we are, I and my friends... Well, what do you think of us? What do Frenchmen think of us?”
The hero turned pale, then red. He was desirous of not offending by rash or imprudent words such vindictive beings; on the other hand, how consort with murderers? He got out of it by a metaphor:—
“Différemment, mademoiselle, you were telling me just now that we belonged to the same brotherhood, hunters of hydras and monsters, despots and carnivora... It is therefore to a companion of St. Hubert that I now make answer... My sentiment is that, even against wild beasts we should use loyal weapons... Our Jules Gérard, a famous lion-slayer, employed explosive balls. I myself have never given in to that, I do not use them... When I hunted the lion or the panther I planted myself before the beast, face to face, with a good double-barrelled carbine, and pan! pan! a ball in each eye.”
“In each eye!..” repeated Sonia.
“Never did I miss my aim.”
He affirmed it and he believed it.
The young girl looked at him with naïve admiration, thinking aloud:—
“That must certainly be the surest way.”
A sudden rending of the branches and the underbrush, and the thicket parted above them, so quickly and in so feline a way that Tartarin, his head now full of hunting adventures, might have thought himself still on the watch in the Zaccar. But Manilof sprang from the slope, noiselessly, and close to the carriage. His small, cunning eyes were shining in a face that was flayed by the briers; his beard and his long lank hair were streaming with water from the branches. Breathless, holding with his coarse, hairy hands to the doorway, he spoke in Russian to Sonia, who turned instantly to Tartarin and said in a curt voice:—
“Your rope... quick...”