Such was the scene towards the northeast: but it was evident that the fallen masses had not yet firmly fixed themselves in the position which they were probably to bear for ages afterward. From time to time a rock rolled over, but slowly, making its way down into the valley with increasing speed, sometimes pausing and fixing itself in a new bed part of the way down. None of these, however, in their descent, reached the spot where Bernard de Rohan stood, for he was at least three hundred yards from the base of the mountain which had thus been produced during the night. As it came down, indeed, the immense body had been accompanied by the fall of large masses of stone, which were scattered on all sides, so that the green bosom of the valley--which, on the preceding day, had been carpeted by soft and equal turf, only broken here and there by a tall tree, or clumps of shrubs and bushes, or else by large fantastic lumps of rock or stone, fallen immemorial ages before, and clothed by the hand of time with lichens or creeping plants--was now thickly spotted with fresh fragments, which from space to space had shivered the trees in their descent, and in other places was soiled with long tracks of various-coloured earths, which had showered down like torrents as the great mass descended farther on. The stream, swollen, turbid, and furious, was rushing on amid the rocks in the middle of the valley; but the traces of where it had lately been evidently showed that it was rapidly decreasing in volume, and had already much diminished. Bernard de Rohan traced it up with his eye to the spot where it descended from the hill, crossing the road, which ran along the top of a steep bank on the opposite side. The cataract through which he had forced his horse the night before was there visible, and still showed a large column of rushing water, though it, too, was greatly lessened. This waterfall, however, gave the young cavalier some mark by which to judge of the distances; and he found that he must have been carried down the stream nearly three hundred yards before he recovered himself and got to land. He thus perceived how near the chief mass of falling mountain must have passed to the spot where he had been standing, and he felt that the detached rock, which had struck his horse and cast him down into the stream before the whole fell, had probably saved his life.