"Precisely, Madame—the coiffure Montgolfier," Germain at once replied, for he had looked into hat fashions lately.
"Please describe it to me after dinner. All the world is speaking of it."
"To the devil with coiffures!" Grancey whispered to the Canoness, and struck up a pæan of praise on the lean hound Aréthuse who led the hunt the previous day.
"Yes, but I believe that dog is possessed of the devil," asserted d'Estaing. "Did you notice her eyes flash when she sprang down the hideous glen where we nearly broke our necks? The foresters once told me about that place."
"What about it?"
"It is the glen of the Great Hunter. The courtiers of King Henry IV were hunting in that part of the forest one day, when they heard a tremendous horn, saw the stag turn, and a strange pack of dogs in full chase fly after it across their path; and with the hounds they saw a hunter, riding on a great black horse. They stopped and shouted at the intruder, and searched about for him, when a gigantic savage of a frightful countenance sprang above the bushes and said in a voice which froze their blood: 'Do you hear me?' Since then he has been seen many times by the foresters and others."
"I do not like the subject," shuddered Mademoiselle de Richeval, crossing herself.
"Pardon me," d'Estaing gravely said, bowing.
"Tell me something about those men ascending into the clouds," spoke the silvery voice of the young Baroness, addressing Germain.
He gladly told her all he knew of the late ascent, at which he had been present in Bordeaux; how Montgolfier and his brother made the balloon; how he stood by their enclosure and saw them fill the balloon with inflammable gas; how the brave four got into the car and everybody prophesied their destruction; and of the speechless thrill with which he saw at last the strange machine dart upwards and carry them swiftly higher and higher, until it was but a speck drifting across the clouds.