My feelings were strange. During the whole journey I had been looking through the rents in the cover of the little wagon, but only watching for an opportunity of escape. But however determined I was to seize the very first that presented itself, there was none, not even the slightest. The two gendarmes, of whom one was one of those who had hunted me in vain upon the island, rode on the right and left close behind the wagon without exchanging a word, their moustachioed faces looking straight between their horses' ears, or turned sideways towards the wagon. There was not the slightest doubt that the first movement that looked like an attempt to escape would bring the butts of their carbines to their shoulders. To make the attempt in the presence of two well-armed, well mounted, and thoroughly determined men, would have been to seek, not liberty, but death. And none of the chances had happened which I had imagined possible. We had passed no bridge over which I might have leapt into a torrent, we had entered no crowded market-place in which I might have sprung into the throng, and perhaps found shelter with some compassionate soul. Nothing of the kind; we travelled the seven or eight miles of the journey at a walk, or a short trot, without a single halt, and without an interruption of any kind, and now before me rose the towers in whose shadow lay my prison. And yet at this time I no longer felt the wrath and burning indignation which had filled my breast the whole time that I was in custody under examination. The two hours in the open air had done me inexpressible good. It had been raining for some time before, and I had held out my hands to catch the drops; I had inhaled with delight the fresh air that blew into the wagon. Now the sun had again broken through the clouds, and, as it was near its setting, cast long ruddy streaks over the green sprouting fields and the sparkling meadows. Birds sang and twittered in the trees by the wayside; just before us in the east stood a brilliant rainbow with one foot on the mainland, and the other on the island. All nature seemed so calm and gentle, so free from hate or anger; on the contrary all things wore so mild a beauty and breathed such sweet peace, that I who from a child had sympathized with every mood of nature, could not close my heart to her soft solicitations. My heart sang with the birds; it floated on the moist pinions of the gentle breeze that bore blessings over the fields and meadows; it bathed in the bright hues of the bow of hope, which sprang from earth to heaven and back to earth again. The feeling that I was, as it were, a part of all these, and yet was sitting a prisoner in the jail-van, begat in me such a sense of pity for myself as I had never before experienced. I covered my face with my hands and wept.