The _treibers_ work in couples, Count Westphal leading them. It is not etiquette for the host to shoot; he must leave all the chances of glory to his guests. Among the _treibers_ were various servants and _chasseurs_ carrying extra guns and short daggers for the final despatch (_le coup de grâce_). We heard them coming nearer and nearer, but we saw no boar. Many other animals came wonderingly forward: some foxes, trailing their long tails gracefully over the snow, looked about them and trotted off; a furtive deer cautiously peered around with ears erect and trotted off also; but it is not for such as these we stand ankle-deep in the snow, shivering with cold and half frozen. A shot now would spoil all the sport. One has a longing to talk when one is told to be quiet. I can't remember ever having thought of so many clever things I wanted to say as when I stood behind the ducal back--things that would be forever lost! And I tried to enter them and fix them in my brain, to be produced later; but, alas! The Duke (being, as I said, very short-sighted) came near shooting one of his own servants. The man who carried his extra gun had tied the two ends of a sack in which he carried various things, and put it over his head to keep his ears warm. Just as the Duke was raising his gun, thinking that if it was not a boar it was something else, I ventured a gentle whisper, "C'est votre domestique, Monseigneur." "Merci!" he whispered back, in much the same tone he would have used had I restored him a dropped pocket- handkerchief. Finally (there must be an end to everything) we saw beneath us, on the plains, three wild boars leaping in the snow, followed by a great many more. They had the movements of a porpoise as he dives in and out of the water, and of an ungraceful and hideous pig when hopping along. The Duke fired his two shots, and let us hope two boars fell. The others flew to right and left, except one ugly beast, who came straight toward our own tree. I must say that in that moment my little heart was in my throat, and I realized that the tree was too high to climb and too small to hide behind. The Duke said, in a husky voice, "Don't move, for God's sake, even if they come toward us!" This was cheery! Abraham's blind obedience was nothing to mine! Here was I, a stranger in a foreign land, about to sacrifice my life on the shrine of a wild boar! Count Metternich, behind the next tree, fired and killed the brute, so I was none the worse save for a good fright. It was high time to kill him, for he began charging at the beaters, and threatened to make it lively for us; and if Count Metternich had not, in the nick of time, sent a bullet into him, I doubt whether I should be writing this little account to you at this moment.