"Neither Cotereaux, nor Brabançois, nor Routiers, nor living creatures of any kind, see I, to the right or left, Beau Sire," replied the squire, in a measured man-at-arms-like tone, without either turning his head or slackening his pace in the least degree.
"But art thou leading us on the right road? I ask thee," repeated the count.
"I know not. Beau Sire," replied the squire. "I was thrown out, to guard against danger,--I had no commands to seek the right road." And he continued to ride on the wrong way as calmly as if no question existed in respect to its direction.
"Halt!" cried De Coucy. The man-at-arms stood still; and a short council was held between the two knights in regard to their farther proceedings, when it was determined that, although they were evidently wrong, they should still continue for some way on the same road, rather than turn back after so long a journey. "We must come to some château or some habitation soon," said De Coucy; "or, at the worst, find some of your country shepherds to guide us on towards the chapel. But, methinks, Hugo de Barre, you might have told us sooner, that you did not know the way!"
"Now, good sir knight," replied the squire, speaking more freely when addressed by his own lord, "none knew better than yourself, that I had never been in Auvergne in all my days before. Did you ever hear of my quitting my cot and my glebe, except to follow my good lord the baron, your late father, for a forty days' chevauchée against the enemy, before I took the blessed cross, and went a fool's errand to the Holy Land?"
"How now, sir!" cried De Coucy. "Do you call the holy crusade a fool's errand? Be silent, Hugo, and lead on. Thou art a good scout and a good soldier, and that is all thou art fit for."
The squire replied nothing; but rode on in silence, instantly resuming his habit of glancing his eye rapidly over every object that surrounded him, with a scrupulous accuracy that left scarce a possibility of ambuscade. The knights and their train followed; and turning round a projecting part of the mountain, they found that the road, instead of descending, as they had imagined, continued to climb the steep, which at every step gained some new feature of grandeur and singularity, till the sublime became almost the terrific. The verdure gradually ceased, and the rocks approached so close on each side as to leave no more space than just sufficient for the road, and a narrow deep ravine by its side, at the bottom of which, wherever the thick bushes permitted the eye to reach it, the mountain torrent was seen dashing and roaring over enormous blocks of black lava, which it had channelled into all strange shapes and appearances. High above the heads of the travellers, also, rose on either hand a range of enormous basaltic columns, fringed at the top by some dark old pines that, hanging seventy or eighty feet in the air, seemed to form a frieze to the gigantic colonnade through which they passed.
De Coucy looked up with a smile, not unmixed with awe. "Could you not fancy, D'Auvergne," he said, "that we were entering the portico of a temple built by some bad enchanter to the Evil Spirit? By the holy rood! it is a grand and awful scene! I did not think thy Auvergne was so magnificent."
As he spoke, the squire, who preceded them, suddenly stopped, and, turning round--
"The road ends here. Beau Sire," he cried. "The bridge is broken, and there is no farther passage."