instant.

The blood which issued from the little fawn made a widening pool, and
one saw the ladies of the hunt, who came to look as near as possible,
pluck up their habits so that they would not tread in it. The sight of
the great stag crushed by weariness, gradually drooping his branching
head, tormented by the howls of the hounds which the whipper-in held
back with difficulty, and that of the little one, cowering beside him
and dying with gaping throat, would have been touching had one given
way to sentiment.

I noticed that the imminent slaying of the stag excited a certain
curious fever. Around me the women and young girls especially elbowed
and wriggled their way to the front, and shuddered, and were glad.

They cut the throats of the beasts, the big and the little, amid
absolute and religious silence, the silence of a sacrament. Madame
Lacaille vibrated from head to foot. Marie was calm, but there was a
gleam in her eyes; and little Marthe, who was hanging on to me, dug her
nails into my arm. The prince was prominent on our side, watching the
last act of the run. He had remained in the saddle. He was more
splendidly red than the others--empurpled, it seemed, by reflections
from a throne. He spoke in a loud voice, like one who is accustomed to
govern and likes to discourse; and his outline had the very form of
bidding. He expressed himself admirably in our language, of which he
knew the intimate graduations. I heard him saying, "These great
maneuvers, after all, they're a sham. It's music-hall war, directed by
scene-shifters. Hunting's better, because there's blood. We get too
much unaccustomed to blood, in our prosaic, humanitarian, and bleating
age. Ah, as long as the nations love hunting, I shall not despair of
them!"

Just then, the crash of the horns and the thunder of the pack released
drowned all other sounds. The prince, erect in his stirrups, and
raising his proud head and his tawny mustache above the bloody and
cringing mob of the hounds, expanded his nostrils and seemed to sniff a
battlefield.

The next day, when a few of us were chatting together in the street
near the sunken post where the old jam-pot lies, Benoit came up, full
of a tale to tell. Naturally it was about the prince. Benoit was
dejected and his lips were drawn and trembling. "He's killed a bear!"
said he, with glittering eye; "you should have seen it, ah! a tame
bear, of course. Listen--he was coming back from hu