"What bitter thoughts does the sight of the Château de Pont Brillant evoke in the mind of this pale, handsome youth that he cannot take his eyes off it?"
David's attention was suddenly diverted by the blare of trumpets still a long way off but evidently approaching the mall, and a few minutes afterward this promenade was thronged with a crowd, eager to see the cortège of hunters organised in honour of St. Hubert by the young marquis.
The expectations of the crowd were not disappointed. The shrill notes of the trumpets sounded louder and louder, and a brilliant cavalcade appeared at the end of the mall.
The procession began with four whippers-in on horseback, in buckskin jackets and breeches, with scarlet collars and facings richly trimmed with silver braid, with cocked hats on their heads and hunting knives in their belts. They also carried bugles, upon which they alternately sounded the calls for the advance and retreat of the hounds.
Then came fully one hundred magnificent hunting dogs of English breed, wearing upon their collars, still in honour of St. Hubert, big knots of fawn-coloured and scarlet ribbon.
Six keepers on foot, also in livery, with knee-breeches, silk stockings, and shoes with big silver buckles, also with hunting knives, followed the pack, responding with their horns to the bugles of the huntsmen.
A hunting fourgon, drawn by two horses driven tandem, served as a funeral-car for a magnificent stag reposing upon a bed of green branches, with his enormous antlers adorned with long floating ribbons.
Behind this fourgon came the huntsmen, all on horseback, some in long scarlet redingotes, others clad out of courtesy in uniform like that worn by the young Marquis de Pont Brillant.