"The boar! the boar!" cried Charles. "Help, D'Alençon! help!"
Nevertheless the horse, left to himself, and as if he had understood his rider's peril, made an effort, and had already got up on three legs, when Henry saw the Duke Francis grow deadly pale, bring his arquebuss to his shoulder, and fire. The ball, instead of striking the boar, now but at two paces from the king, broke the front leg of the horse, who again fell with his nose upon the earth. At the same moment Charles's boot was torn by the tusk of the boar.
"Oh!" murmured D'Alençon between his pallid lips, "I think that the Duke of Anjou is King of France, and that I am King of Poland!"
It seemed indeed probable. The snout of the boar was rummaging Charles's thigh, when the latter felt somebody seize and raise his arm—a keen bright blade flashed before his eyes, and buried itself to the hilt in the shoulder of the brute; whilst a gauntleted hand put aside the dangerous tusks which were already disappearing under the King's garments. Charles, who had taken advantage of the horse's movement to disengage his leg, rose slowly to his feet, and, seeing himself covered with blood, became as pale as a corpse.
"Sire," said Henry, who, still on his knees, held down the boar, which he had stabbed to the heart—"Sire, there is no harm done. I put aside the tusk, and your Majesty is unhurt." Then, getting up, he let go his hold of the hunting-knife, and the boar fell, the blood flowing from his mouth even more plentifully than from the wound.
Charles, surrounded by the alarmed throng, and assailed by cries of terror that might well have bewildered the calmest courage, was for a moment on the point of falling senseless near the dying animal. But he recovered himself, and turning towards the King of Navarre, pressed his hand with a look in which was visible the first gleam of kindly feeling that he had shown during his twenty-four years of existence.
"Thanks, Henriot," said he.
"My poor brother!" cried D'Alençon, approaching the king.
"Ah! you are there, D'Alençon?" cried Charles. "Well, you famous marksman, what is become of your bullet?"
"It must have flattened upon the hide of the boar," said the duke.