As he stood and gazed, a small bird upon an opposite tree, which had escaped uninjured throughout the late catastrophe, burst out in a wild and somewhat melancholy song; and Bernard de Rohan, with his heart heavier than before, turned and retrod his steps, in the hopes of finding some place where he could cross the torrent farther down the valley. In this expectation he was disappointed; the stream only grew larger, and deeper, and more impetuous, swelled by the different rivulets that were pouring down the sides of the mountains; and at length, after wandering on more than three miles, it plunged through a deep chasm in the rock, which left no footing for the young cavalier to make his way farther on that side of the valley. Could he have passed the waters, it would have been easy to have made his way up to the little mountain road by which he had passed the preceding night, and which was now before his eyes. But he was shut in between the torrent on one side and the high mountain on the other; and, although he saw some sheep-paths and other tracks, he knew not where they led to, but had only the certainty that they must take him to a distance from the spot which he wished to reach immediately, in order to relieve the darkest anxiety of all the many that were at his heart. Turning back, then, he made a desperate, but ineffectual effort to pass the masses of the mountains which had been thrown down, and by midday he was forced to retread his steps nearly to the same spot where he had found himself in the morning.
In much pain from the bruises he had received, and exhausted with exertion and want of food, he sat down for a time to rest, and drank of the waters of the stream, although they were still troubled. He then took the resolution of endeavouring to climb the mountains which formed that side of the valley where he then was, trusting that he might find some one to show him the nearest way to the inn on the eastern slope of the hills. The path was rugged and winding, the mountain bleak and arid, and several hours elapsed while he wandered on, before he heard the sound of any living creature, or saw any moving thing, except when once or twice some object of the chase started away from his path, and when the golden lizards, basking in the sun, turned round their snake-like heads to gaze on the unwonted human form that passed them.