I hate my father, and Philippe too. They are pure evil. Yesterday, I went out hunting, which was supposed to be my treat for finishing my painting. A painting which I haven’t finished, as it happens, because it is too awful, but that is not the point. I was so fed up with it all, I pushed the easel aside and I joined the hunting party, hoping the fresh forest air would clear my head and do me good, perhaps.

There were eight of us riding out yesterday. My family – Papa and Philippe and Dorian and myself – made four, plus the duc of the estate next door and his huntsmen made us eight.

We set off at a canter through the forests following after the hounds – there were six of these and they were terrible howlers, baying and carousing at the merest provocation as they ran ahead. I had been given a big, heavy roan draught horse that was a little too strong and too big for me, so I was mostly concentrating on keeping him back as he fought to get to the front. Horses in a large group will often get hot and uncontrollable, and he was being very headstrong, pulling hard on the reins and pushing off his hocks to leap forward in ridiculous bounds, fretting at the bit. My entire focus had become staying in the saddle and not being tossed to the ground. I haven’t fallen off a horse in a very long time, not since I was perhaps seven years old, and I didn’t want to break my record now.

At the sound of the horn, I knew the master upfront had sighted a stag, and now we were galloping and the horses were fighting to take the lead and it was bedlam. The tracks soon narrowed – stags do not care to stick to the paths – and we began to ride in single file, into the very heart of the forest. As the trees closed in, I stayed low on my horse’s neck to avoid being hit by a bough, and at the same time I tried to keep my weight in my heels and my thighs gripped tight. The roan, despite his speed, was spooking constantly at every leaf that fluttered, and I thought that any minute he might veer in either direction and I would be flung to the ground. There was no time to think about anything except for hanging on for dear life, and there was certainly no way of stopping. If I had tried to pull the roan up, or to turn him to go back and away from the others, he would have mutinied and bucked or reared, and that would have been the end of me. All I could do was keep my seat and stay with the hunt.