“Yes, until the time when the wolves assemble to pursue and tear him to pieces. Perhaps he would have more chance of life in our royal parks. Everything to its time, Bois-Rose; old age loves silence, youth noise.”
Bois-Rose still fought against the truth. It was the drop of gall that is found at the bottom of every cup of happiness; it is not permitted that there should be perfect felicity, for it would then be too painful to die; neither is unmixed misery allowed to mortals, or it would be painful to live. The Canadian hung his head and looked sad as he glanced at the sleeping youth, while Pepé put on his buffalo-skin buskins.
“Well! what did I tell you?” said he, presently; “do you not hear from afar those howlings—I mean those barkings, for the wolves have voices like dogs when they hunt the stags. Poor stag! he is, as you said, the emblem of life in the desert.”
“Shall I wake Fabian now?” said Bois-Rose.
“Yes, certainly; for after a love dream a stag hunt is the thing most worthy of a nobleman like him, and he will rarely see such a one as this.”
“He will see nothing like it in the towns,” cried the Canadian, enchanted; “such scenes must make him love the desert.”
And he shook the young man gently.
With head thrown back, to inhale more freely the air necessary to his lungs, the stag flew like an arrow along the plain. Behind him a hungry pack of wolves, a few white, but the greater number black, pursued him at full speed. The stag had an immense start, but on the sand heaps, almost lost in the horizon, the piercing eye of the hunter might distinguish other wolves watching. The noble animal either did not see, or else disdained them, for he flew straight towards them. As he neared them he halted a moment. Indeed, he found himself shut in by a circle of enemies, who constantly advanced upon him as he stopped to take breath. All at once he turned round, faced the other wolves, and tried one last effort to escape. But he could not now clear the solid masses that had formed around him, and he fell in the midst of them. Some rolled under his feet, and two or three were tossed in the air. Then, with a wolf hanging to his flanks, bleeding and with tongue protruding, the poor animal advanced to the edge of the water, in front of the three spectators of the strange chase.
“It is magnificent!” cried Fabian clapping his hands, and carried away by the hunter’s enthusiasm, which for the time silences humanity in the heart of men.
“Is it not fine?” cried Bois-Rose, doubly pleased, happy at Fabian’s pleasure, and at his own. “And we shall witness many such fine sights, my Fabian! here you see only the worst side of these American solitudes, but when you go with Pepé and me to the great rivers, and the great lakes of the north—”