It seemed, however, that Garcias had found a relief in breaking the dead silence which had hung upon us so long, for he continued speaking on various topics as we went, and gradually succeeded in drawing my mind from the actual objects of my regret. Not that I forgot my grief; far from it. It still lay a dead and heavy weight upon my heart; but my thoughts did not continue to trace every painful remembrance with the agonizing minuteness which they had lately done. Such is ever the first effect of that balm which Time pours into every wound. It scarcely seems to lessen the anguish, but it renders it less defined. Gradually I listened and replied, and though each minute or two my mind reverted to myself, yet the intervals became longer, and I found it every time more easy than the last to abstract my thoughts from my own situation, and to apply them to the subjects on which he spoke. For more than two hours we continued walking on till we arrived at the heights nearly opposite to Argelez, during which time we had climbed the hills and descended into the valleys more than once. We were now again upon the very crest of the mountain, and the moon was just sinking behind the hills to the west of the Balindrau, when Garcias paused and pointed down the course of a stream that burst precipitately over the side of the hill with so perpendicular a fall that it almost deserved the name of a cataract. The body of water, though then but a rivulet, was at some part of the year undoubtedly considerable, for it had channelled for itself a deep ravine, which, for some space, wound away from the valley, as if obstinately resolved to bear its tribute in any other direction than towards the principal river that flowed in the midst: but, after pursuing these capricious meanderings for a considerable way, it was obliged at length to follow the direction of the hills, and turn towards the valley in its own despite, as we often see, in some far province, a stubborn contemner of established authorities pursue for a while his own wilful way, fancying himself a man of great spirit and an independent soul, till comes some stiff official of the law, who turns him sneaking back into the common course of life. The bottom of the ravine, left free by the shrinking of the stream, was lined on either hand with the most luxuriant verdure, and overhung by a thousand shrubs and trees, now in their ruffling dresses of summer green. Where we then stood, however, many hundred yards above, with the moon, as I have said, sinking behind the opposite mountains, all that I could see was a dark and fearful chasm below, at the bottom of which I caught every now and then the flash and sparkle of the stream, whose roar, as it broke from fall to fall, reached my ear even at that height. Down this abyss it was that Garcias pointed, saying that our journey's end lay there, for the present.