He could not at first believe in their good fortune. “Mon Dieu!” he cried, “we are crossing!” And then again in a lower tone, “We are crossing!  We are crossing!” And he looked at her.

It was impossible that she should not look back; that she who had ceased to be angry should not feel and remember; impossible that her answering glance should not speak to his heart.  Below them, as on that day a month earlier, when they had crossed the bridges going northward, the broad shallow river ran its course in the sunshine, its turbid currents gleaming and flashing about the sandbanks and osier-beds.  To the eye, the landscape, save that the vintage was farther advanced and the harvest in part gathered in, was the same.  But how changed were their relations, their prospects, their hopes, who had then crossed the river hand-in-hand, planning a life to be passed together.

The young man’s rage boiled up at the thought.  Too vividly, too sharply it showed him the wrongs which he had suffered at the hands of the man who rode behind him, the man who even now drove him on and ordered him and insulted him.  He forgot that he might have perished in the general massacre if Count Hannibal had not intervened.  He forgot that Count Hannibal had spared him once and twice.  He laid on his enemy’s shoulders the guilt of all, the blood of all:  and, as quick on the thought of his wrongs and his fellows’ wrongs followed the reflection that with every league they rode southwards the chance of requital grew, he cried again, and this time joyously—­

“We are crossing!  A little, and we shall be in our own land!”

The tears filled the Countess’s eyes as she looked westwards and southwards.

“Vrillac is there!” she cried; and she pointed.  “I smell the sea!”

“Ay!” he answered, almost under his breath.  “It lies there!  And no more than thirty leagues from us!  With fresh horses we might see it in two days!”

Badelon’s voice broke in on them.  “Forward!” he cried, as the party reached the southern bank. “En avant!” And, obedient to the word, the little company, refreshed by the short respite, took the road out of Ponts de Ce at a steady trot.  Nor was the Countess the only one whose face glowed, being set southwards, or whose heart pulsed to the rhythm of the horses’ hoofs that beat out “Home!” Carlat’s and Madame Carlat’s also.  Javette even, hearing from her neighbour that they were over the Loire, plucked up courage; while La Tribe, gazing before him with moistened eyes, cried “Comfort” to the scared and weeping girl who clung to his belt.  It was singular to see how all sniffed the air as if already it smacked of the sea and of the south; and how they of Poitou sat their horses as if they asked nothing better than to ride on and on and on until the scenes of home arose about them.  For them the sky had already a deeper blue, the air a softer fragrance, the sunshine a purity long unknown.