To this remark he did not pay the slightest attention. Between a sneeze and a cough—we were rapidly catching our deaths—he said, under his breath, "If they smell us they go away."
The treibers work in couples, Count Westphal leading them. It is not etiquette for the host to shoot; he must leave all the chances of glory to his guests. Among the treibers were various servants and chasseurs carrying extra guns and short daggers for the final despatch (le coup de grâce). We heard them coming nearer and nearer, but we saw no boar. Many other animals came wonderingly forward: some foxes, trailing their long tails gracefully over the snow, looked about them and trotted off; a furtive deer cautiously peered around with ears erect and trotted off also; but it is not for such as these we stand ankle-deep in the snow, shivering with cold and half frozen. A shot now would spoil all the sport. One has a longing to talk when one is told to be quiet. I can't remember ever having thought of so many clever things I wanted to say as when I stood behind the ducal back—things that would be forever lost! And I tried to enter them and fix them in my brain, to be produced later; but, alas!
The Duke (being, as I said, very short-sighted) came near shooting one of his own servants. The man who carried his extra gun had tied the two ends of a sack in which he carried various things, and put it over his head to keep his ears warm. Just as the Duke was raising his gun, thinking that if it was not a boar it was something else, I ventured a gentle whisper, "C'est votre domestique, Monseigneur." "Merci!" he whispered back, in much the same tone he would have used had I restored him a dropped pocket- handkerchief.
Finally (there must be an end to everything) we saw beneath us, on the plains, three wild boars leaping in the snow, followed by a great many more. They had the movements of a porpoise as he dives in and out of the water, and of an ungraceful and hideous pig when hopping along.
The Duke fired his two shots, and let us hope two boars fell. The others flew to right and left, except one ugly beast, who came straight toward our own tree. I must say that in that moment my little heart was in my throat, and I realized that the tree was too high to climb and too small to hide behind. The Duke said, in a husky voice, "Don't move, for God's sake, even if they come toward us!"
This was cheery! Abraham's blind obedience was nothing to mine! Here was I, a stranger in a foreign land, about to sacrifice my life on the shrine of a wild boar! Count Metternich, behind the next tree, fired and killed the brute, so I was none the worse save for a good fright. It was high time to kill him, for he began charging at the beaters, and threatened to make it lively for us; and if Count Metternich had not, in the nick of time, sent a bullet into him, I doubt whether I should be writing this little account to you at this moment.
There was a great deal of shouting, and the hounds were baying at the top of their lungs, and every one was talking at the same time and explaining things which every one knew. Counting the guests, the servants, the trackers, the dilettantes, there were seventy people on the spot; and I must say, though we were transis de froid, it was an exhilarating sight —the snow is such a beautiful mise en scène. However, we were glad to get back into the sheep-skin bags and draw the fur rugs up to our noses, and though I had so many brilliant things to say under the tree I could not think of one of them on our way home.
Fourteen big, ugly boars were brought and laid to rest in the large hall, on biers of pine branches, with a pine branch artistically in the mouth of each. They weighed from one to three hundred pounds and smelled abominably; but they were immensely admired by their slayers, who pretended to recognize their own booty (don't read "beauty," for they were anything but beautiful) and to claim them for their own. Each hunter has the right to the jaws and teeth, which they have mounted and hang on their walls as trophies.
Count Westphal has his smoking-room filled to overflowing with jaws, teeth, and chamois heads, etc. They make a most imposing display, and add feathers to his already well-garnished cap.
Howard said, in French, to the Duke, in his sweet little voice, looking up into his face, "I am so sorry for you!"