The Prince-Marshal’s old blood was warmed up now, and he flew along, feeling as he used in the days of the duels, and the Burgundy, and the lansquenet. He shouted and spurred his steed, urging it with hand and voice and leg, but the highly-broken and well-trained animal felt its powers failing, and persistently declined to attempt the feat it had seen the others accomplish; so the Prince-Marshal was forced to discontinue the chase and remain on the safe side of the rubicon, whence he turned his horse unwillingly homewards, heated, angry, and swearing many strange oaths in different languages. Meanwhile the other two galloped on, the Marquise, though she spared no effort, finding herself unable to overtake the captain of Grey Musketeers. All at once he stopped short at a clump of willows, through which the chase had disappeared, and jumping off his horse, left the panting beast to its own devices. When she reached the trees, and looked down into the hollow below, she perceived the stag up to its chest in a bright, shallow pool, at bay, and surrounded by the eager though exhausted hounds. The Musketeer had drawn his _couteau de chasse_, and was already knee-deep in the water, but hearing her approach, turned back, and, taking his hat off, with a low obeisance, offered her the handle of his weapon. It was the customary form when a lady happened to be present on such an occasion, though, as now, the compliment was almost always declined. He had scarcely gone in and given the _coup de grace_, which he did like an accomplished sportsman, before some of the yeomen-prickers and other attendants came up, so that the disembowelling and other obsequies were performed with proper ceremony. Long, however, ere these had been concluded the Marquise was riding her tired horse slowly homeward through the still, sweet autumn evening, not the least disturbed that she had lost the Abbé and the rest of her escort, but ruminating, pleasantly and languidly, as her blood cooled down, on the excitement of the chase and the events of the day. She watched the sunset reddening and fading on the distant woods; the haze of twilight gradually softening, and blurring and veiling the surrounding landscape; the curved edge of the young moon peering over the trees, and the evening-star hanging, like a golden lamp, against the purple curtain of the sky. With head bent down, loose reins, and tired hands resting on her lap, Madame de Montmirail pondered on many matters as the night began to fall. She wondered at the Abbé’s want of enterprise, at the Prince-Marshal’s activity—if the first could have yet reached home, and whether the second, with his rheumatism, was not likely to spend a night in the woods. She wondered at the provoking cynicism of the one and the extraordinary depressive powers possessed by the other; more than all, how she could for so long have supported the attentions of both.