Picture after picture flashed before him with agonizing vividness—all that had gone to make his life since his return from Bohemia to his last parting, a few hours ago, with Clémence in her father’s house formed and faded with mechanical repetition, and against the background of their visionary memories raced his thoughts.
It came to this: a little while ago he had been happy with the ecstatic happiness of youth—of proud, ambitious youth; he had seen honourable labour behind, honourable labour ahead; he had felt love rest against his heart, and seen glory hovering very near. And now—he was riding through the dark, with disease, corruption, perhaps death, in his arms; riding away from the home to which he had lately pledged himself, away from Clémence and all she stood for—with a woman associated with humiliation and sadness for his companion—with great chances that he would never be able to turn back again to those things he had left behind.
Yet he was conscious all the time of the highest exaltation perhaps that he had ever known—an intermittent sensation, now weaker, now stronger, that, however, held his heart up steadily.
The night seemed endless. Only once did they meet anyone—some peasants in a cart, who stopped and seemed to wonder at them.
“We carry the plague!” cried Carola as they galloped past, and they heard the men’s cries of terror and supplications to God.
The child began to stir in Luc’s arms. He himself felt faint; the night wind brought on his cough, which had troubled him since his last campaign. He tried to comfort the little girl; she became still again, and, he thought, heavier.
He turned to Carola beside him; since they started she had not spoken to him.
“It must be near the dawn,” he said.
“I do not know,” she answered, and added, after a little, “Are we not off the road? I think we have lost the way.”
The moon was setting. Luc had been dwelling so in his thoughts that he had not noticed through what growing blackness they were riding. A wind was up, and they could hear it shaking some trees near with a deep rustling sound.