It was not long before the Baron’s pack was decimated; his best hounds were nearly dead with fatigue, and his more second-rate ones had perished by the wolves’ teeth. The stable was in no better condition than the kennel; Bayard was foundered, Tancred had sprained a tendon leaping over a ditch, and a strained fetlock had placed Valourous on the list of invalids. Sultan, luckier than his three companions had fallen honourably on the field of battle, having succumbed to a sixteen hours’ run under the weight of his gigantic master, who never for a moment lost courage notwithstanding the fact that the dead bodies of his finest and most faithful servitors lay heaped around him. The Baron, following the example of the noble-hearted Romans who exhausted the resources of military art against the Carthaginians who were for ever re-appearing as enemies, the Baron, I repeat, changed his tactics and tried what battues could accomplish. He called on all available men among the peasants, and beat up the game throughout the forest with such a formidable number of men, that not so much as a hare was left in its form near any spot which they had passed. But Thibault made it his business to find out beforehand where these battues were going to take place, and if he ascertained that the beaters were on the side of the forest towards Viviers or Soucy, he and his wolves made an excursion to Boursonnes or Yvors; and if the Baron and his men were busy near Haramont or Longpré, the people of Corcy and Vertefeuille were made painfully aware of Thibault and his wolves. In vain the Lord of Vez drew his cordon at night round the suspected enclosures, so as to begin the attack with daylight; never once did his men succeed in starting a wolf, for not once did Thibault make a mistake in his calculations. If by chance he had not been well informed, and was uncertain in what direction the Baron and his men were going, he called all his wolves together, sending express couriers after them as the night set in; he then led them unobserved down the wooded lane leading to Lessart-l’Abbesse, which at that time ran between the forest of Compiègne and the forest of Villers-Cotterets, and so was able to pass from one to the other. This state of things went on for several months. Both the Baron and Thibault carried out the task each had set before himself, with equally passionate energy; the latter, like his adversary, seemed to have required some supernatural power, whereby he was able to resist fatigue and excitement; and this was the more remarkable seeing that during the short intervals of respite accorded by the Lord of Vez, the Wolf-leader was by no means at peace in himself.