‘As you doubtless know,’ he said, after telling me something of how creditably the Kaiser shot, considering his infirmity, ‘a strenuous endeavour is always made on these occasions that the best game be driven up to the rifles of royalty, a custom which none of the Hohenzollerns have ever had the sporting instinct to modify in favour of even the most distinguished visitors. By some chance on the day in question, a remarkably fine boar ran unscathed the gauntlet of the imperial batteries and fell--an easy shot--to my own bullet. It was a really magnificent trophy--the brute was as high at the shoulder as a good-sized pony, and his tusks curved through fully ninety degrees more than a complete circle--and it had occurred to me at once that it was in order that I should at least _offer_ to make a present of the head to my royal host. Frankly, however, I really wanted it very badly for my own hall, and I can still recall hoping that the Kaiser would “touch and remit, after the manner of kings,” as Kipling puts it.’ The Baron was silent for a few moments, staring hard in front of him with the look of a man who ponders something that has rankled in his mind for years. ‘Well,’ he resumed presently, ‘the Kaiser _did_ “touch” (in the sense the Yankees use the term, I mean), but he did not “remit.” When we came to group for the inevitable after-the-hunt photograph, I was dumbfounded to see a couple of the imperial huntsmen drag up my prize, not in front of me, where immemorial custom decreed it should go, but to the feet of the Kaiser. He even had the nerve to have the photograph taken with his foot on its head. You have shot big game yourself, and you will know, therefore, that this would convey to any hunter exactly the same thing as his writing under the photograph, “I shot this boar myself.”’ The Baron took a long breath before resuming. ‘I need not tell you how surprised and angry I was, and I will not tell you what it took all the self-control I had to keep from doing. What I _did_ do, I flatter myself, would have been thoroughly efficacious in bringing home to any other man in this world the consummate meanness of the thing he had done. The moment the photograph was finished I stepped up to the Kaiser and, controlling my voice as best I could, said: “Your Majesty, I beg you will deign to accept as a humble token of my admiration of your prowess as a hunter and your courtesy as a host the fine boar which my poor rifle was fortunate to bring down to-day.”