"Come, cheer up, Count Louis!" cried Garcias; "I did not think to see so brave a heart as yours overset by a thing that happens to every one now and then. Give him a horn of La Mancha brandy, Señor Miller; 'twill comfort his heart, and get rid of such foolish qualms. In the meanwhile, I will go out and see after the body. If no one has come near it, and I can get it down to the river, I will cast it in below the fall. The waters are full, and it may go down for ten or fifteen miles, so that nobody will hear more of it, and the Count may stay in his own land. But if they have discovered the business, our young Seigneur must lie here till midnight, and then be off with me into Spain. I shall meet my good fellows in the mountains; and then the _douaniers_ who would stop us must have iron hands and a brazen face." I let them do with me whatsoever they liked. It seemed that those fine ties which connect the mind and the body were so far broken or relaxed, that the sensations of the one had no longer their effect upon the other. My heart was on fire, and my thoughts were as busy as hell could wish; but I scarcely saw, or heard, or knew what was passing around me; and I let Garcias and the miller manage me as if I had been an automaton, without exerting any volition of my own. I drank the raw spirit that the miller gave me; and indeed it might as well have been water. I suffered him, when Garcias was gone, to pour on his consolations, which fell cold and heavy upon my ear, but found not their way to my heart. Nor, indeed, did he seem to understand the cause of that despairing melancholy in which I was plunged, attributing my grief to fear of the consequences, or to dislike to quit my country. I had not the spirit even to repel such a supposition, though my feelings were very, very different. The absorbing consciousness of guilt prevented me at first from even remembering or thinking of the impassable barrier now placed between me and Helen. That was an after-thought, infinitely painful, it is true, but it came not at once. The only thought which occupied me--if, indeed, thought it can be called,--was the mental endeavour to qualify the bitterness of my feelings, by remembering that the act which had so suddenly plunged me into misery was not a voluntary one; and I had continually to reiterate, to press upon my own mind, that it was accidental, and to call up the memory of every painful circumstance, in order to assure myself that I was practising no self-deception. Then, too, came the consciousness that I had pointed the gun; and a thousand times I asked myself, what would have been my conduct had I not stumbled over the rock?--Would I have fired? Would I have refrained? I know not; and still my own heart condemned me, and branded me with the name of murderer.