CHAPTER IV
TANTARA!
Year by year a certain stag had been growing fatter and
fatter in the deep glades and quiet woodlands that surrounded
Fontainebleau. He was but a pricket when Cerise
made her daisy-chain in the gardens of Versailles, but each
succeeding summer he had rubbed the velvet off another
point on his antlers, and in all the king's chase was no
finer head than he carried the day he was to die. Brow,
bay, and tray, twelve in all, with three in a cup at the summits,
had been the result of some half-score years passed in
the security and shelter of a royal forest; nor was the
lapse of time which had thus brought head and haunch to
perfection without its effect upon those for whose pastime
the noble beast must fall.
Imagine, then, a glowing afternoon, the second week in August. Not a cloud in the sky, a sun almost tropical in its power, but a pure clear air that fanned the brow wherever the forest opened into glades, and filled the broad nostrils of a dozen large, deep-chested, rich-coloured stag-hounds, snuffing and questing busily down a track of arid grass that seemed to have checked their steady, well-considered unrelenting chase, and brought their wondrous instinct to a fault. One rider alone watched their efforts with a preoccupied air, yet with the ready glance of an old sportsman. He had apparently reached his point of observation before the hounds themselves, and far in advance of the rest of the chase. His close-fitting blue riding-coat, trimmed with gold-lace and turned back with scarlet facings, called a "just au corps," denoted that he was a courtier; but the keen eye, the erect figure, the stateliness, even stiffness of
