"I mean, sire, when an animal is brought to bay."
"Ah! ah!" said the king, "it was when the animal was brought to bay, then, that the accident happened."
The king paused for a moment before he said: "What animal was being hunted?"
"And what could possibly have possessed De Guiche to go to a wild-boar hunt by himself; that is but a clownish idea of sport, and only fit for that class of people who, unlike the Maréchal de Grammont, have no dogs and huntsmen to hunt as gentlemen should do."
Manicamp shrugged his shoulders. "Youth is very rash," he said sententiously.
"At all events," continued Manicamp, not venturing to be too precipitate and hasty, and letting his words fall very slowly, one by one, "at all events, sire, poor De Guiche went hunting--quite alone."
"Quite alone, indeed! What a sportsman. And is not M. de Guiche aware that the wild boar always stands at bay?"
"That is the very thing that really happened, sire."
"He had some idea, then, of the beast being there?"
"Yes, sire, some peasants had seen it among their potatoes."
"You may as well tell me, monsieur, that Guiche had some idea of committing suicide, for I have seen him hunt, and he is an active and vigorous hunter. Whenever he fires at an animal brought to bay and held in check by the dogs, he takes every possible precaution, and yet he fires with a carbine, and on this occasion he seems to have faced the boar with pistols only."
"A costly pair of pistols, excellent weapons to fight a duel with a man and not with a wild boar. What absurdity."
"There are some things, sire, which are difficult of explanation."
"You are quite right, and the event which we are now discussing is one of those things. Go on."
During the recital, Saint-Aignan, who had probably made a sign to Manicamp to be careful what he was about, found that the king's glance was constantly fixed upon himself, so that it was utterly impossible to communicate with Manicamp in any way. As for D'Artagnan, the statue of Silence at Athens was far more noisy and far more expressive than he. Manicamp, therefore, was obliged to continue in the same way he had begun, and so contrived to get more and more entangled in his explanation. "Sire," he said, "this is probably how the affair happened. Guiche was waiting to receive the boar as it rushed toward him."