In early years he had lost both his parents, but that was the only misfortune which had befallen him, and it was long ago. He scarcely remembered them; and all that remained was a soft memory, affectionate but not painful. Since then his course had been from one bright thing to another. Wise and tender friends, the amusements, the sports, the studies of youth, virtue and honour, wealth and station, praise, success, and glory had been his. He had no thirst for power: so what could he want more? Had any one asked him that question, he would have replied, Nothing: nothing but what he might well hope to attain; and yet, about an hour before the sun reached the edge of the sky, a fit of gloom fell upon him, dark, vague, unaccountable, like one of those mists that in mountain lands suddenly surround the wayfarer, shutting out the beauty and the brightness, and leaving all around dull, chilly, vague, uncertain, and confused. For nearly half an hour he gave way to the sensations that oppressed him. They seemed at first too mighty to be struggled with. It was what, in the language of Northern poetry, is called "having the cloud upon him," and he could not cast it off; till at length it seemed to rise gradually, and the power returned, first, of arguing with himself upon the unreasonableness of such feelings, and then of smiling--though with a mingled smile--at his own weakness in giving way to them. The effect wore off; but he was still communing with himself on the sensations he had just experienced, when the page called his attention to the clouds that were gathering round the mountains. With that quick transition so common to hill countries, especially in the south, the sky was becoming rapidly obscured. The lurid masses of stormy vapour writhed themselves round the peaks; and, although beneath their dark canopy a gleam of intense red light was seen marking the far western sky on the side of France, the whole heaven above was soon covered with a thick expanse of deep gray cloud. At a considerable distance, in the more open part of the country, which lay beyond the mouth of the defile, stretching in long lines of dark purple towards the sunset, appeared a large square tower, with some other neighbouring buildings, cutting with their straight lines the rounded forms of the trees. "That must be Voiron," said the cavalier, as if in answer to his page's observation regarding the coming storm. "We must quicken our pace and reach shelter, or we shall have to pass half the night in cleaning our arms, if yonder frowning cloud fulfil one half its menaces." "Voiron must be ten leagues off, sir," replied one of the attendants; "we shall not reach it this night." "Then we must find some other covering," replied the master, gayly; "but, at all events, put to your spurs, for the battle has already begun."