her mind, derived from the many significations of this varied scene.

There is no spot in a forest which does not have its significance; not
a glade, not a thicket but has its analogy with the labyrinth of human
thought. Who is there among those whose minds are cultivated or whose
hearts are wounded who can walk alone in a forest and the forest not
speak to him? Insensibly a voice lifts itself, consoling or terrible,
but oftener consoling than terrifying. If we seek the causes of the
sensation--grave, simple, sweet, mysterious--that grasps us there,
perhaps we shall find it in the sublime and artless spectacle of all
these creations obeying their destiny and immutably submissive. Sooner
or later the overwhelming sense of the permanence of Nature fills our
hearts and stirs them deeply, and we end by being conscious of God. So
it was with Veronique; in the silence of those summits, from the odor
of the woods, the serenity of the air, she gathered--as she said that
evening to Monsieur Bonnet--the certainty of God's mercy. She saw
the possibility of an order of deeds higher than any to which her
aspirations had ever reached. She felt a sort of happiness within her;
it was long, indeed since she had known such a sense of peace. Did
she owe that feeling to the resemblance she found between that barren
landscape and the arid, exhausted regions of her soul? Had she seen
those troubles of nature with a sort of joy, thinking that Nature was
punished though it had not sinned? At any rate, she was powerfully
affected; Colorat and Champion, following her at a little distance,
thought her transfigured.

At a certain sport Veronique was struck with the stern harsh aspect of
the steep and rocky beds of the dried-up torrents. She found herself
longing to hear the sound of water splashing through those scorched
ravines.

"The need to love!" she murmured.

Ashamed of the words, which seemed to come to her like a voice, she
pushed her horse boldly toward the first peak of the Correze, where,
in spite of the forester's advice, she insisted on going. Telling her
attendants to wait for her she went on alone to the summit, which is
called the Roche-Vive, and stayed there for some time, studying
the surrounding country. After hearing the secret voice of the many
creations asking to live she now received within her the touch, the
inspiration, which determined her to put into her work that wonderful
perseverance displayed by Nature, of which