"Poor old traveller!" I cried to myself, "would anybody have told you ten
years ago, when grave, terrible, and solitary you were traversing from
side to side the high glaciers in Switzerland, in the gloomy glens of the
Unterwald, and your deep growls made the old oaks tremble in every
leaf--who could have told you that the day would come when, sad and
resigned, with an iron collar round your throat, you would be tied to a
post and devoured by dogs to amuse a mob at Bergzabern? Alas! _Sic
transit gloria mundi_!"
As these meditations were occupying my thoughts, noticing that everybody
was bending forward to see, I did like the rest, and I soon saw the
possibility of warm work.
A pair of boar-hounds, belonging to old Heinrich, were being led to
the other end of the court. Struggling in the chain, these ferocious
creatures were foaming with rage. One was of the large Danish breed,
white, with large black spots, supple of limb, with muscles like steel
springs, jaws opening wide like an alligator's; the other a huge hound
from the Tannewald, never disabled in one leg according to law, ribs
barely covered, the backbone hard and knotted like a bamboo cane.
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