The result was that, amidst the mixture
of costumes in the hunt, there was no reason why mine should
attract attention, or why these men, whose thoughts were all with
the chase, should give any heed to me. The idea that a French
officer might be riding with them was too absurd to enter their
minds. I laughed as I rode, for, indeed, amid all the danger,
there was something of comic in the situation.
I have said that the hunters were very unequally mounted, and so
at the end of a few miles, instead of being one body of men, like
a charging regiment, they were scattered over a considerable
space, the better riders well up to the dogs and the others
trailing away behind.
Now, I was as good a rider as any, and my horse was the best of
them all, and so you can imagine that it was not long before he
carried me to the front. And when I saw the dogs streaming over
the open, and the red-coated huntsman behind them, and only seven
or eight horsemen between us, then it was that the strangest
thing of all happened, for I, too, went mad--I, Etienne Gerard!
In a moment it came upon me, this spirit of sport, this desire to
excel, this hatred of the fox.
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