'Oh, the poor animals!' said Madame de Combelot, with an air of languid compassion.
'Splendid!' cried M. La Rouquette.
Chevalier Rusconi applauded loudly. Several of the ladies were leaning forward in their excitement, while their lips quivered and their hearts throbbed with desire to see the hounds devour their prey. Would they not be allowed to have the bones at once? they asked.
'No, not just yet,' said several voices.
Firmin had again twice dropped and then raised his whip. The hounds were exasperated and foamed at the mouth. But the third time, Firmin did not raise his whip again. The valet rushed away, carrying off the stag's head and skin, while the dogs leapt forward and seized the offal. Their furious barking subsided into a low quivering growl of enjoyment. Bones could be heard cracking. Then general satisfaction was expressed upon the balcony and at the windows. The ladies smiled in chilly fashion and clenched their white teeth, and the men looked on with glistening eyes, while twisting the tooth-picks they had brought from the dining-room. In the courtyard came sudden brilliance. The huntsmen sounded a flourish on their horns; the dog-keepers waved their torches, and a blaze of coloured lights arose, setting the night aflare and then raining sanguineously on the placid heads of the townsfolk on either hand.
The Emperor, however, turned his back upon the scene, and on noticing Rougon close to him, he seemed to awake from the moody reverie in which he had been absorbed since dinner. 'Monsieur Rougon,' he said, 'I have been thinking about that scheme of yours. There are difficulties in the way—many difficulties.' Then, after a momentary pause, he opened his lips to speak again, but closed them without saying anything. However, as he went away, he added: 'You must remain in Paris, Monsieur Rougon.'
Clorinde, who heard him, made a gesture of triumph. The Emperor's remark immediately spread through the company, and the guests once more became grave and anxious, as Rougon slowly made his way through their midst, towards the Gallery of the Maps.
Down below in the courtyard, the hounds were finishing their bones. They flung themselves wildly atop of one another in order to reach the prey. With their writhing backs, white and black, all jumbled together, they were like a living wave, surging and struggling and roaring hungrily. Their jaws snapped, and they bolted mouthful after mouthful in their feverish eagerness to devour all. Quarrels, brief and sudden, ended in a loud howl. One large hound, a magnificent creature, finding himself too far away from the quarry, stepped back and then sprang into the very middle of the pack. He forced his way through the others, and soon gulped down a great strip of the stag's entrails.