The equipage started forth in full ceremonial on the quest of stag and boar. The bugles blew and a sort of stimulated courage once more entered the king's breast, courage born of the excitement around him, the baying of the hounds and the tramping and neighing of impatient horses. He had forced himself from his bed and on horseback and started off with the rest, defying the better counsel of his retainers.
His strength proved to be born of a fictitious enthusiasm, and, speedily losing interest, he was brought back to the manor where he had his apartments, and put speechless and half dead to bed, actually dying the next day from this last over-exertion, scarce half a century of the span of his life accomplished.
Henri de Navarre also was a true lover of the open. Born in a mountain town in the Pyrenees he would rather camp on a bed of pine needles in the forest than lie on a tuft of down. He preferred his beloved Bayonne ham, spiced with garlic, to a sumptuous dinner in Jarnet house, a famous Paris tavern of the day; and had rather quench his thirst with a quaff of the wine of Jurançon than the finest cru in Paris cellars.
A "Curée aux Flambeaux"
He hated the parade of courts, was dirty, unkempt and careless, a genuine son of the soil, heedless of fate, and an excellent huntsman.
Up to the seventeenth century the ladies of the French court showed a keener interest for falconry than for the hunt by horse and hounds.
The heroines of the Fronde, and the generation which followed, seemed to lose interest in this form of sport, and gave their favour to packs of hounds, and followed with equal interest the hunt for deer, wolves, boars, foxes and hares as they were tracked through forests and over arid wastes.
The old hunting horn, the winding horn of romance, still exists at the hunts of France, a relic of the days of Louis XIV. It sounds the conventional comings and goings of the huntsmen in the same classic phraseology as of old—the lancer, the bien allée, the vue, the changement de forêt, the accompagné, the bat l'eau, the hallali par terre, and the curée.
The "Curée aux Flambeaux" was one of the most picturesque ceremonies connected with the royal hunt in France. It began in the gallant days, and lived even until the time of the Second Empire.