I was too full of my reading not to behold on every hand Comtesses de Chateaubriand[214], Duchesses d'Étampes[215], Gabrielles d'Estrées, La Vallières, and Montespans. My imagination seized upon the historic aspect of this hunting-party, and I felt at my ease: besides, I was in a forest, and therefore at home. On alighting from the coaches, I handed my ticket to the huntsmen. A mare called L'_Heureuse_ had been provided for me, a fast animal, but hard-mouthed, skittish, and full of tricks; a tolerable likeness of my fortune, which has constantly set back its ears. The King mounted and rode off; the members of the hunt followed, taking different roads. I stayed behind, struggling with L'_Heureuse_, who refused to let her new master get astride of her; I ended, however, in leaping upon her back: the hunt was already far ahead. [Illustration: Louis XVI.] At first I mastered L'_Heureuse_ fairly well; compelled to shorten her stride, she put down her neck, shook her bit, which was white with foam, and bounded along sideways; but when she drew near the scene of action, it became impossible to hold her. She bore down her head, drove my hand down upon the saddlebow, dashed at full gallop into a group of hunters, clearing everything in her course, and only stopped when she struck against the horse of a woman whom she nearly knocked over, amid the roars of laughter of some and the screams of terror of others. I have made useless efforts today to remember the name of the woman who received my excuses so politely. There was nothing else talked of than the _débutant's_ "adventure." [Sidenote: Louis XVI.] I had not come to the end of my trials. About half-an-hour after my discomfiture, I was riding through a long opening in a deserted part of the wood; at the end stood a summer-house: I at once began to think of the palaces scattered through the Crown forests, in memory of the origin of the long-haired kings and their mysterious pleasures. A shot was heard; L'_Heureuse_ turned short, scoured the thicket with lowered head, and carried me to the exact spot where the roebuck had just been killed: the King appeared. I then remembered, but too late, the Duc de Coigny's injunctions: the accursed _Heureuse_ had done all I leapt to the ground, pushing my mare back with one hand, holding my hat low in the other. The King looked and saw only a _débutant_ who had come in at the death before himself; he felt a need to speak; instead of flying into a passion, he said, in a good-natured voice and with a broad laugh: "He did not hold out long." That is the only word I ever had from Louis XVI. People came up from every side; they were astonished to find me "talking" with the King. The _débutant_ Chateaubriand created a sensation with his two "adventures;" but, as has ever happened to him since, he did not know how to turn either his good or his bad fortune to account.