Part 86 (2/2)
”Come! come!” cried the d.u.c.h.esse de Nevers. ”Do not miss, sire. Give the beast a good stab!”
”Be easy, d.u.c.h.ess!” said Charles.
Couching his lance, he darted at the boar which, held by the two bloodhounds, could not escape the blow. But at sight of the s.h.i.+ning lance it turned to one side, and the weapon, instead of sinking into its breast, glided over its shoulder and blunted itself against the rock to which the animal had run.
”A thousand devils!” cried the King. ”I have missed him. A spear! a spear!”
And bending back, as hors.e.m.e.n do when they are going to take a fence, he hurled his useless lance from him.
An outrider advanced and offered him another.
But at that moment, as though it foresaw the fate which awaited it, and which it wished to resist, by a violent effort the boar s.n.a.t.c.hed its torn ears from the teeth of the bloodhounds, and with eyes b.l.o.o.d.y, protruding, hideous, its breath burning like the heat from a furnace, with chattering teeth and lowered head it sprang at the King's horse.
Charles was too good a hunter not to have foreseen this. He turned his horse, which began to rear, but he had miscalculated the pressure, and the horse, too tightly reined in, or perhaps giving way to his fright, fell over backwards. The spectators gave a terrible cry: the horse had fallen, and the King's leg was under him.
”Your hand, sire, give me your hand,” said Henry.
The King let go his horse's bridle, seized the saddle with his left hand, and tried to draw out his hunting knife with his right; but the knife, pressed into his belt by the weight of his body, would not come from its sheath.
”The boar! the boar!” cried Charles; ”it is on me, D'Alencon! on me!”
The horse, recovering himself as if he understood his master's danger, stretched his muscles, and had already succeeded in getting up on its three legs, when, at the cry from his brother, Henry saw the Duc Francois grow frightfully pale and raise the musket to his shoulder, but, instead of striking the boar, which was but two feet from the King, the ball broke the knee of the horse, which fell down again, his nose touching the ground. At that instant the boar, with its snout, tore Charles's boot.
”Oh!” murmured D'Alencon with ashy lips, ”I suppose that the Duc d'Anjou is King of France, and that I am King of Poland.”
The boar was about to attack Charles's leg, when suddenly the latter felt someone raise his arm; then he saw the flash of a sharp-pointed blade which was driven into the shoulder of the boar and disappeared up to its guard, while a hand gloved in steel turned aside the head already poked under his clothes.
As the horse had risen, Charles had succeeded in freeing his leg, and now raising himself heavily, he saw that he was dripping with blood, whereupon he became as pale as a corpse.
”Sire,” said Henry, who still knelt holding the boar pierced to the heart, ”sire, it is nothing, I turned aside the teeth, and your Majesty is not hurt.”
Then he rose, let go the knife, and the boar fell back pouring forth more blood from its mouth than from its wound.
Charles, surrounded by a breathless crowd, a.s.sailed by cries of terror which would have dashed the greatest courage, was for a moment ready to fall on the dying animal. But he recovered himself and, turning toward the King of Navarre, he pressed his hand with a look in which shone the first spark of feeling that had been roused in his heart for twenty-four years.
”Thank you, Henriot!” said he.
”My poor brother!” cried D'Alencon, approaching Charles.
”Ah! it is you, D'Alencon, is it?” said the King. ”Well, famous marksman that you are, what became of your ball?”
”It must have flattened itself against the boar,” said the duke.
”Well! my G.o.d!” exclaimed Henry, with admirably a.s.sumed surprise; ”you see, Francois, your bullet has broken the leg of his Majesty's horse.
That is strange!”
”What!” said the King; ”is that true?”
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