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like a hare before the hounds, came down upon his head, and

turning a somersault with his four paws, and throwing the bloody

weight of his huge body right under the Count, hurled him from

his feet to the earth; he still roared, and tried to rise, when

the furious Strapczyna and the ferocious Sprawnik descended on

him.

Then the Seneschal seized his buffalo horn, which hung by a

strap, long, spotted, and crooked as a boa constrictor, and with

both hands pressed it to his lips. He blew up his cheeks like a

balloon, his eyes became bloodshot, he half-lowered his eyelids,

drew his belly into half its size, sending thence into his lungs

his entire supply of breath, and began to play. The horn, like a

cyclone with a whirling breath, bore the music into the forest

and an echo repeated it. The sportsmen became silent, the hunters

were amazed by the power, purity, and marvellous harmony of the

notes. The old man was once more exhibiting before an audience of

huntsmen all that art for which he had once been famous in the

forests; straightway he filled and made alive the woods and

groves as though he had led into them a whole kennel and had

begun the hunt. For in the playing there was a short history of

the hunt.