"Down there! Why you said you would not leave me for an instant."
"Come, come, don't be absurd; the moments are precious; you see I shall only be distant an hundred yards."
"An hundred yards! I tell you what—if you go ten yards, I go too."
"What! are you afraid? We are alone; come, be frank."
"No! I am not afraid, but my nerves are shaken; I am thoroughly done up with the scramble we have had through these woods; and then that rascal Serpolet, who prophesied that I shall be opened like an oyster—you shall not go, for I feel sure that when this brute of a boar makes his appearance, I shall be unable to look him in the face."
"My dear friend, I will do as you desire. We have still half an hour to wait; but remember, no imprudence—and if you should see my finger raised, mind, not a word or a sign."
As I uttered this apostrophe, a long and harmonious note from the head-keeper's horn, vibrating in the distance, came and died away upon our ears; after which, a confused clamour of voices arose, and as suddenly ceased.
"Hurrah! hurrah!" said I; "the traqueurs are on the move, the curtain is raised, the play is about to commence—and, dear friend, be silent as death, for the actor will soon make his appearance on the stage."
During the next ten minutes, a murmur of voices and confused sounds were again borne on the wind to the two sportsmen, announcing that the line of beaters was steadily advancing, and now they could distinctly hear them at intervals, striking the trunks of the trees with their long iron-shod poles, thrusting them in the underwood, and shouting in chorus the song of the boar.
Again the horn is heard; but now its notes are sharp, shrill, jerking and hurried.