Page:The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant.djvu/155

Rh side-cuts in the forest. The carriages which followed the chase at a distance drove noiselessly along the soft roads.

From mischief, Madame d'Avancelles kept the baron by her side, lagging behind at a walk in an interminably long and straight drive, over which four rows of oaks hung, so as to form almost an arch, while he, trembling with love and anxiety, listened with one ear to the young woman's bantering chatter, and with the other to the blast of the horns and to the cry of the hounds as they receded in the distance.

"So you do net love me any longer?" she observed.

"How can you say such things?" he replied.

And she continued: "But you seem to be paying more attention to the sport than to me."

He groaned, and said: "Did you not order me to kill the animal myself?"

And she replied gravely: "Of course I reckon upon it. You must kill it under my eyes."

Then he trembled in his saddle, spurred his horse until it reared and, losing all patience, exclaimed: "But, by Jove, Madame, that is impossible if we remain here."

Then she spoke tenderly to him, laying her hand on his arm, or stroking his horse's mane, as if from, abstraction, and said with a laugh: "But you must do it—or else, so much the worse for you."

Just then they turned to the right, into a narrow path which was overhung by trees, and suddenly, to avoid a branch which barred their way, she leaned toward him so closely, that he felt her hair tickling his neck. Suddenly he threw his arms brutally round her, and putting his heavily mustached mouth to her forehead, he gave her a furious kiss.

At first she did not move, and remained motionless under that mad caress; then she turned her head with a jerk, and either by accident or design her little lips met his, under their wealth of light hair, and a moment afterward, either from confusion or remorse, she struck her horse with her riding-whip, and went off at full gallop, and they rode on like that for some time, without exchanging a look.

The noise of the hunt came nearer, the thickets seemed to tremble, and suddenly the wild boar broke through the bushes, covered with blood, and trying to shake off the hounds who had fastened on to him, and the baron, uttering a shout of triumph exclaimed: "Let him who loves me follow me!" And he disappeared in the copse, as if the wood had swallowed him up.

When she reached an open glade a few minutes later, he was just getting up, covered with mud, his coat torn, and his hands bloody, while the brute was lying stretched out at full length, with the baron's hunting-knife driven into its shoulder up to the hilt.

The quarry was cut at night by torch-light. It was a warm and dull evening, and the wan moon threw a yellow light on to the torches which made the night misty with their resinous smoke. The hounds devoured the wild boar's entrails, and snarled and fought for them, while the prickers and the gentlemen, standing in a circle round the spoil, blew their horns as loud as they could. The flourish of the hunting-horns