"Are you mad?" cried Federico to me when he came up to me, very pale.
"Did I frighten you? Forgive me, I did not think there was any danger. It was to try the horse; and then I could not control him—he is a little hard in the mouth."
"Orlando hard in the mouth!"
"Don't you find him so?"
He looked at me fixedly, with an uneasy expression. I attempted a smile. His unusual pallor pained me and aroused my sympathy.
"I do not understand how you escaped breaking your head against a tree; I cannot imagine how it is you were not thrown."
"And you?"
To follow me, he had exposed himself to the same peril, perhaps to a still greater one; because his horse was heavier, and he had had to put him at his full speed for fear of not joining me in time. We both looked back at the distance just covered.
"It is a veritable miracle," he said. "To get out of the Assoro is almost impossible. Just look!"
We looked down at the deadly river that rolled beneath our feet. Deep, shining, rapid, full of whirlpools and gulfs, the Assoro ran between two chalky cliffs, with a silence that rendered it still more sinister. The country harmonized with that treacherous and menacing aspect. The sky, which early in the afternoon was covered with vapors, was now overcast with diffused reflections of the tangle of reddish brushwood that still survived to the spring. The dead leaves mingled with the growth of new leaves, the dried brambles with the green shoots, the dead with the newly born vegetation, in an inextricable, symbolic confusion. Above the agitated surface of the river, above that incongruous thicket, the sky blanched, faded away, seemed to dissolve.