o his
hiding-place.
* * * * *
As Mademoiselle de Verneuil walked through the country she seemed to
breathe a new life. The freshness of the night revived her after the
fiery experience of the last few hours. She tried to follow the path
explained to her by d'Orgemont, but the darkness became so dense after
the moon had gone down that she was forced to walk hap-hazard, blindly.
Presently the fear of falling down some precipice seized her and saved
her life, for she stopped suddenly, fancying the ground would disappear
before her if she made another step. A cool breeze lifting her hair, the
murmur of the river, and her instinct all combined to warn her that she
was probably on the verge of the Saint-Sulpice rocks. She slipped her
arm around a tree and waited for dawn with keen anxiety, for she heard
a noise of arms and horses and human voices; she was grateful to the
darkness which saved her from the Chouans, who were evidently, as the
miser had said, surrounding Fougeres.
Like fires lit at night as signals of liberty, a few gleams, faintly
crimsoned, began to show upon the summits, while the bases of the
mountains still retained the bluish tints which contrasted with the rosy
clouds that were floating in the valley. Soon a ruby disk rose slowly
on the horizon and the skies greeted it; the varied landscape, the
bell-tower of Saint-Leonard, the rocks, the meadows buried in shadow,
all insensibly reappeared, and the trees on the summits were defined
against the skies in the rising glow. The sun freed itself with a
graceful spring from the ribbons of flame and ochre and sapphire. Its
vivid light took level lines from hill to hill and flowed into the
vales. The dusk dispersed, day mastered Nature. A sharp breeze crisped
the air, the birds sang, life wakened everywhere. But the girl had
hardly time to cast her eyes over the whole of this wondrous landscape
before, by a phenomenon not infrequent in these cool regions, the mists
spread themselves in sheets, filled the valleys, and rose to the tops
of the mountains, burying the great valley beneath a mantle of snow.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil fancied for a moment she saw a _mer de glace_,
like those of the Alps. Then the vaporous atmosphere rolled like
the waves of ocean, lifted impenetrable billows which softly swayed,
undulated, and were violently whirled, catching from the sun's rays
a vivid rosy tint, and showing here and there in their depths
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