“Ah, ah!” said the king, “it was when the animal was brought to bay, then, that the accident happened?”

“Alas!

sire, unhappily it was.”

The king paused for a moment before he said: “What animal was being hunted?”

“A wild boar, sire.”

“And what could possibly have possessed De Guiche to go to a wild boar-hunt by himself; that is but a clownish idea of sport, only fit for that class of people who, unlike the Marechal de Gramont, have no dogs and huntsmen, to hunt as gentlemen should do.”

Manicamp shrugged his shoulders. “Youth is very rash,” he said, sententiously.