We were very young to feel such passions as then throbbed within our bosoms, so strong, so keen, so durable; but our hearts had never known any other--they had not been hardened in the petrifying stream of time, nor had the world engraved so many lines upon the tablets of feeling as to render them unsusceptible of any deep and defined impression. Our whole hearts were open to love, and we loved with our whole hearts. The two days of my stay soon drew to an end, and on the morning of the third, my horse, and that of Houssaye, together with a mule for Father Francis, were brought into the courtyard; and, after receiving my mother's counsel and my father's blessing, I mounted and rode forth with few of those pleasurable feelings which I had anticipated in setting out to explore foreign lands. But love was at that moment the predominant feeling in my bosom, and I would have resigned all, abandoned all, to have stayed and passed my life in tranquillity beside Helen. It was not to be, and I went forth; but a sensation of swelling at my heart prevented me from either conversing with Father Francis, or noticing the beautiful country through which we travelled--a thing seldom lost to my eyes. By the time we reached Pierrefitte, however, a distance of about ten miles, the successive passing of different objects, though each but called my attention in the very slightest degree, upon the whole, began to draw my mind from itself; and when proceeding onward we wound our horses through the narrow gorge leading towards Luz, the magnificent scenery of the pass, with its enormous rocks, its luxuriant woods, and its rushing river, stole from me my feelings of regret, and left me nothing but admiration of the grand and beautiful works which nature had spread around. By this time the day had somewhat waned, for we were obliged to conform our horses' pace to the humour of Father Francis' mule, which was not the most vivacious of animals. The sun had got beyond the high mountains on our right, which, now robed in one vast pall of purple shadow, rose like Titans against the sky, and seemed to cover at least one third of its extent; but the western hills still caught the rays, and kept glowing with a thousand varied hues as we went along, like the quick changes of hope as man advances along the tortuous and varied path of existence.