This is the interesting moment. The boar pulls himself together, feeling that he is to die, and, up to his belly in water, he bravely awaits the pack. With his eye glowing with rage, his bristles erect, he utters grunts of defiance. The fifty dogs throw themselves on to him without a moment's hesitation; but four or five are sent rolling into the middle of the water, never more to rise. The struggle which follows is terrible; the boar's tusks tell at every blow, and the water becomes literally red with blood. At length the foremost sportsmen come up, and it is high time they do. Seven dogs are already lying on their backs, with their legs in the air, and almost all bear marks of the boar's terrible tusks. The first who is ready alights from his steed, and boldly advances into the water; for it would be imprudent to fire at the boar from the edge of the pond, and thereby run the risk of wounding him, and rendering him still more furious, or even of killing one of the dogs, by whom he is surrounded. An interval of solemn silence ensues; the horns only wait for the shot to be fired to sound the _hallali_. The dogs make way in order to let the sportsman advance; the boar draws back a little, and then making a bound recovers all his strength for a rush upon his enemy. Woe to the man who misses him! the boar will give him no quarter. But the sportsman waits for him very quietly, and when he is only two paces from him plants a bullet between his eyes, which lays him dead. The notes of the _hallali_ awake the echoes: never had a hunt been crowned by finer results. The setting sun lighted up the scene, which transpired just below the Château de Montmort, scarcely half a mile off, and the ladies assembled on the terrace of the old château of Sully waved their handkerchiefs in congratulation to the fortunate sportsmen. The foregoing narrative furnishes a good idea of the ordinary method of hunting the wild-boar on horseback in the Champagne, a method which, though offering at times varying details, arising from the size of the animal pursued and the number and strength of the hounds engaged in the chase, presents, on the whole, a general resemblance to the description just given. Some years back boars were far from numerous in the Champagne, hiding themselves, moreover, in inaccessible positions far away in the woods, so that it was necessary to cover a larger extent of ground in order to sight a recent trail. Latterly, however, these animals have multiplied considerably, each sow having seven or eight young ones at a litter, and littering three times a year. In the forests around Reims and Epernay twelve, and even fifteen, boars have been killed during a single hunt. It not unfrequently happens that a herd of fifty, and even a hundred, boars are encountered together, when a veritable massacre often ensues, if the hunting-party only comprises a sufficient number of guns.