It was assuredly a man, but one who was so unrecognisable, so miry, so woeful and so frightful, that he might have been taken for an animal, a boar that hounds had tracked and forced from his retreat.

On seeing the rivulet, he hesitated for a moment, and then followed its course.

But, all at once, as a sound of footsteps and panting breath drew nearer, he sprang into the water, which reached his thighs, bounded on to the further bank, and vanished from sight behind a clump of pines.

A moment afterwards some keepers and policemen rushed by, skirting the rivulet, and in their turn disappearing.

It was a man hunt that had gone past, a fierce, secret hunt with no display of scarlet or blast of horns athwart the soft, sprouting foliage.
"Some rascal or other," muttered Pierre.