It was about three o'clock in the afternoon when Emile Gagnepain left the camp. Notwithstanding the rather suspicious escort by which he was accompanied, it was with a sigh of satisfaction that the young man at last saw himself clear of this repair of bandits, from which at one time he feared he should never again set out.
The route which the little caravan followed was most picturesque and varied. A narrow path wound on the side of the mountains, almost always close to unfathomable precipices, from the base of which arose mysterious murmurs produced by invisible waters. Sometimes a bridge formed by two trunks of trees thrown across a chasm, which suddenly interrupted the route, was crossed, as if in play, by horses and mules for a long time accustomed to walk over routes more perilous still.
Obliged to travel one behind the other, owing to the narrowness of the scarcely traced path which they were pursuing, the travellers could not talk to each other; it was scarcely possible for them to exchange a few words, and they were constrained to abandon themselves to their own thoughts, or to charm the weariness of the journey by singing or whistling. It was in thus examining the abrupt and wild landscape by which he was surrounded that the young man formed a good idea of the formidable and almost impregnable position chosen by the partisan for his headquarters, and the great influence that this position must give him over the dismayed inhabitants of the plain. He shuddered as he thought of the imprudence he had committed in allowing himself to be taken to this fortress which, like the infernal circles of Dante, was by nature surrounded by impassable intrenchments, and which never gave up the prey that had once been drawn into it. A crowd of melancholy stories of young girls, who had been carried away and had disappeared, recurred to his mind, and, by a strange reaction of thought, he experienced a kind of retrospective turn—if we may be allowed the expression—in thinking of the terrible dangers that he had run in the midst of these lawless bandits, by whom, in many instances, the law of nations—sacred among all civilised peoples—had not been respected.
Then, from reflection to reflection—by a very natural gradation—his mind fixed itself on the ladies whom he had left without support or protection in the midst of these men. Although he had only left them with the design of attempting a last effort for their deliverance, his conscience reproached him for having abandoned them; for, notwithstanding the absolute impossibility of his being useful to them at Casa-Frama, he was convinced that his presence was a check upon the Pincheyras, and that before him none of them would have dared to have subjected the captives to any brutal act.
A prey to these painful thoughts, he felt his spirits sadden by degrees, and the joy that he had at first experienced on seeing himself so unexpectedly at liberty gave place to the despondency which several times already had seized on him, and had destroyed his energy.
He was drawn from these reflections by the voice of Don Santiago, which suddenly fell upon his ear.
The young man quickly raised his head, and looked round him like a man suddenly awakened.
The landscape had completely changed. The path had by degrees become broader, and had assumed the appearance of a regular route; the mountains were lower; their sides were now covered with verdant forests, the leafy summits of which were tinted with all the colours of the rainbow by the mild rays of the setting sun. The caravan emerged at this moment into a rather extensive plain, surrounded by thick shrubbery and traversed by a narrow stream, the capricious meanderings of which were lost here and there in the midst of high and thick grass.
"What do you want?" asked the Frenchman, who, susceptible like all artists, had become absorbed, unknown to himself, by the influence of this majestic landscape, and felt gaiety replace the sadness which had for a long time oppressed him; "What do you want now, Don Santiago?"