The man did as he was bid, and the reply was, "That the landlord had gone away towards the market of St. Laurent an hour or two before daybreak, as was always his custom." "That is sufficient," said the count, with a sneer. "Quick with the horses; let us mount and go on." CHAPTER XIII. The great tamers of strong spirits, the quellers of the rebellious heart, the conquerors of the obdurate, the determined, and the enduring, Silence and Solitude, were upon Bernard de Rohan. To know nothing of what is passing without; to have no marker of the steps of time; to see no sun rise or set; to have not even the moving shadow upon the wall to tell us that another lapse of the wearisome hours has taken place; to have nothing, in short, to link us on to human destinies, and to show us that we are wending on our way with our fellow-beings--nothing but the dull beatings of the heavy heart, and the grinding succession of bitter thoughts--this, surely, is not life; and if it be not death, it is something worse. Where there is no change of anything to mark its passing, time seems, in truth, to sink back into that ocean from which it was called at first, Eternity: and, wanting all means of calculating its flight, Bernard de Rohan did indeed feel each moment to be an age. Actual pain would have been almost a relief to the despairing vacuity of that which must have been the second day of his confinement. We can scarcely doubt that the punishment of Prometheus would have been more complete, had he been left in the solitude of the frowning heavens, without the vulture as his companion, though his tormentor. No one came near the young cavalier throughout the whole day. The food which had been left for him was just sufficient for the four-and-twenty hours: more than sufficient, as it proved, indeed, for he tasted it not; and when, at the end of that period, it was renewed, so quick was the passing in and out of him who brought the fresh supply, that the young cavalier scarcely saw the man's entrance ere the door was again closed, and he was once more alone. It seemed to him several hours after this brief visitation had been made--and true it is, he had gone through so many ranges of painful thought, that they might well have furnished occupation and bitterness for more than one long day--when he heard a sound at the door of the dungeon, as if some one endeavoured, with an unaccustomed hand, to draw back the heavy bolts and turn a key in the lock. At the same time, he heard a low, deep voice murmur, "The fool should have left a lamp!" "Ay, that is right!" and the next moment the key turned, the lock gave way, and the door was thrown open.