urged by bit and spur, gave a leap, which brought his rider swooping down upon Thibault, while at the same moment a furious blow from the butt end of the Baron’s whip fell upon his head.
The shoemaker, stunned by the blow, tottered a moment, lost his balance and was about to fall face downwards, when the Baron, drawing his foot out of the stirrup, with a violent kick in the chest, not only straightened him again, but sent the poor wretch flying in an opposite direction, where he fell with his back against the door of his hut.
“Take that!” said the Baron, as he first felled Thibault with his whip, and then kicked him, “take that for your lie, and that for your banter!”
And then, without troubling himself any further about the man, whom he left lying on his back, the Lord of Vez, seeing that the hounds had rallied on hearing Marcassino’s cry, gave them a cheery note on his horn, and cantered away.
Thibault lifted himself up, feeling bruised all over, and began feeling himself from head to foot to make sure that no bones were broken.
Having carefully passed his hand over each limb in succession, “that’s all right,” he said, “there is nothing broken either above or below, I am glad to find. So, my Lord Baron, that is how you treat people, because you happen to have married a Prince’s bastard daughter! But let me tell you, my fine fellow, it is not you who will eat the buck you are hunting today; it will be this blackguard, this scoundrel, this simpleton of a Thibault who will eat it. Yes, it shall be I who eat it, that I vow!” cried Thibault, confirming himself more and more in his bold resolution, and it is no use being a man if having once made a vow, one fails to keep it.
So without further delay, Thibault thrust his billhook into his belt, seized his boar-spear, and after listening for a moment to the cry of the hounds to ascertain in which direction the hunt had gone, he ran off