On an evening during a reception held the previous spring, Madame d’Avancelles had replied to an imploring Monsieur de Croissard with the words: ‘If I am to fall at all, my friend, it will certainly not be before the leaves do likewise. I’ve far too many things to do this summer to give it a thought.’ He had remembered those daring words of hers spoken so provocatively and was now pressing his advantage. Each day he crept closer, gaining more and more of the bold beauty’s heart until by this point her resistance seemed hardly more than symbolic.

Soon there was to be a great hunting party. The night before, Madame Berthe had said laughingly to the Baron: ‘Tomorrow, Baron, if you manage to kill the beast I shall have something to give you.’

He was up at dawn reconnoitring where the wild boar was wallowing. He accompanied his whips, setting out the order of the hunt in such a way that he should return from the field in triumph. When the horns sounded for the meet, he appeared in a well-cut hunting costume of scarlet and gold. With his upright, broad-chested figure and flashing eyes he glowed with good health and manly vigour.

The hunt moved off. The boar was raised and ran, followed by the baying hounds rushing through the undergrowth. The horses broke into a gallop, hurtling with their riders along the narrow forest paths while far behind the following carriages drove noiselessly over the softer verges.

Teasingly, Madame d’Avancelles kept the Baron at her side, slowing down to walking pace in an interminably long, straight avenue along which four rows of oaks arched vaultlike towards each other. Trembling with both desire and frustration he listened with one ear to the young woman’s light badinage, the other pricked for the hunting horns and the sound of the hounds growing fainter by the minute.

‘So you love me no longer,’ she was saying.

‘How can you say such a thing?’ he replied.

‘You do seem to be more interested in the hunt than in me,’ she went on. He groaned. ‘You do remember your own orders don’t you? To kill the beast myself.’

‘Indeed I do,’ she added with great seriousness. ‘Before my very eyes.’ At this he quivered impatiently in the saddle, spurred on his eager horse and finally lost his patience.

‘For God’s sake, Madame, not if we stay here a minute longer.’

‘That is how it has to be nevertheless,’ she cried laughingly. ‘Otherwise, you’re out of luck.’