And now began my second period of wandering; but under conditions infinitely more trying than the first. Keeping to the dense woods by day, and traversing the highways only by night, I had hitherto escaped that which was to prove the cruellest usurer of my vigour--the merciless blazing sun. Here, as I travelled by desolate broomy wastes; by arid hills, from which any knob of rock projecting was hot as the handle of an oven; by choking woods and endless winding valleys,--I would sometimes ask myself in amazement what could be the nature of the infatuation that for its own sake would elect to endure these sufferings. I had not spoken to the girl. I was not authorised to champion her cause. Strangest of all, the lack of womanly sensitiveness she had displayed under the very ordeal of St Fargeau’s dying groans had not prepossessed me in her favour. Yet, slowly was I making, and would continue to make, my way to these mountains of Limosin, in the dreamy hope of happening upon a self-willed and rather heartless young woman, who--if we _were_ to come together--would probably resent my intrusion as an affront. Truly an eccentric quest. Well--I was unaccountable to myself, and of no account to others. Maybe that last is the explanation. My world of conventions was dead, and I lived--as I have already said--a posthumous life. Through it, no doubt, I was drawn by shadows--attracted by the unexplainable--blown by any wind of irresponsibility. This anarchy at least opened out strange vistas of romance to the imaginative soul. It is odd to live apart from, and independent of, the voice of duty. That state shall seldom occur; but, when it does, to experience it is to something feel the marvel of dematerialisation. Depleted of human life; savage in its loneliness; blistered and flaked by the sun, the country through which I travelled was yet beautiful to a degree. Of food--by means of eking out my little supply with chestnuts and wild berries--I had a poor sufficiency; but thirst tortured me often and greatly. I moved slowly, threshing the land, as it were, for traces of an ignis-fatuus that still fled before me in fancy. And I had my frights and perils--one adventure, also; but that I shall not in this connection relate.