The Greek, riding into the stream of fugitives, opened passage with his horse through the seething wave of wagons and animals, rustics and slaves, in which people of different towns were confusedly mingled, while members of scattered families were calling to one another desperately through the clouds of dust.
The fleeing multitude was clearing away. Actæon was beginning to meet the stragglers; poor old women traveling with vacillating step, bearing on their shoulders some lamb which constituted their entire fortune; old men crushed by the weight of pots and clothing; sick people dragging themselves along by the aid of a staff; abandoned animals wandering among the olive trees near the highway, that suddenly darted forward at full speed through the fields as if scenting their masters; children seated on a stone weeping, abandoned by their kindred.
Soon the road was empty. The last of the refugees were left behind, and Actæon saw before him only the narrow tongue of red earth winding along the mountain slopes, without a solitary being to break the monotony of the road with his shadow.
The gallop of his horse resounded like distant thunder through the profound silence. It seemed as if Nature had expired as she guessed the approach of war. Even the ancient trees, the twisted olives which had stood for centuries, the great fig trees which rose like green cupolas against the mountain slopes, remained motionless, as if terrified at the approach of that something which caused the people to abandon their homes and to flee into the city.
Actæon rode through a village. Closed doors! Silent streets! From the interior of a cabin he thought he heard a faint groan--some sick person forsaken by his kindred in their haste to escape. Then he passed a great closed villa. Behind the high mud walls a dog was howling in despair.
Then once more solitude, silence, absence of life, a paralysis that seemed to creep over the fields. Night began to fall. From afar, as if diffused and mellowed by the distance, he heard a muffled booming; something like the surging of an invisible sea, the swelling roar of an inundation.
The Greek left the road; his horse began to climb a cultivated hill, his hoofs sinking into the red soil of the vineyards. From the height he could dominate the landscape for a great distance.