the profound shades of which, choked with briers and foul brush,
showed here and there an opening filled with light. On our left
tumbled the stream of Spinbronn, and the more we climbed the more did
its silvered sheets, floating in the abyss, grow tinged with azure and
redouble their sound of cymbals.

I was captivated by this spectacle. Sir Thomas, leaning back in the
seat, his knees as high as his chin, abandoned himself to his habitual
reveries, while the horse, laboring with his feet and hanging his head
on his chest as a counter-weight to the carriage, held on as if
suspended on the flank of the rock. Soon, however, we reached a pitch
less steep: the haunt of the roebuck, surrounded by tremulous shadows.
I always lost my head, and my eyes too, in an immense perspective. At
the apparition of the shadows I turned my head and saw the cavern of
Spinbronn close at hand. The encompassing mists were a magnificent
green, and the stream which, before falling, extends over a bed of
black sand and pebbles, was so clear that one would have thought it
frozen if pale vapors did not follow its surface.

The horse had just stopped of his own accord to breathe; Sir Thomas,
rising, cast his eye over the countryside.

"How calm everything is!" said he.

Then, after an instant of silence:

"If you weren't here, Frantz, I should certainly bathe in the basin."

"But, Commodore," said I, "why not bathe? I would do well to stroll
around in the neighborhood. On the next hill is a great glade filled
with wild strawberries. I'll go and pick some. I'll be back in an
hour."

"Ha! I should like to, Frantz; it's a good idea. Dr. Weber contends
that I drink too much Burgundy. It's necessary to offset wine with
mineral water. This little bed of sand pleases me."

Then, having set both feet on the ground, he hitched the horse to the
trunk of a little birch and waved his hand as if to say:

"You may go."

I saw him sit down on the moss and draw off his boots. As I moved away
he turned and called out:

"In an hour, Frantz."

They were his last words.

An hour later I returned to the spring. The horse, the carriage, and
the clothes of Sir Thomas alone met my eyes. The sun was setting. The
shadows were getting long. Not a bird's song under the foliage, not
the hum of an insect in the tall grass. A silence like death looked
down on this solitude! The silence frightened me. I climbed up on the
rock which overlooks the cavern; I looked