The Captain alone was silent and immersed in gloomy thoughts. The rest of the Company were merry and indulged in banter. They were bound on an expedition of all others best to their liking. As they descended the valley of the Little Beune they passed under the rock of Cazelles, and looked up with a laugh at the peasants who were peering out of the holes of the cliff, much like jackdaws. Not a bullock, not a sheep was left in the valley. The houses were deserted, and probably everything that could be carried away had been transmitted to the cave refuges. "Look!" mocked one of the riders. "The fellows had such a scare the other day at Ste. Soure that these villains at Cazelles have not yet recovered confidence." Where the Little Beune unites with the Great Beune the blended calcareous waters ooze through bog in a dreamlike, purposeless manner round a shoulder of rock that is precipitous, but which has a sufficiency of solid ground at its feet to allow of a practicable way being carried over this deposit. The Beune and the Vézère are like two different types of character. The latter never deviates from the direction it has resolved on taking except when opposed by obstacles impossible to overleap, and these it circumvents. It saws down every barrier it can; it never halts for a moment; if it turns back in the direction it has been pursuing it is solely that it may seek out a channel more direct and less tortuous. It is so with men and women who have a clear conception of an object at which they are aiming, some purpose in their lives. With the Beune it is otherwise. It has no perceptible current; it does not run; it has no flow; it slips down. It finds itself in a channel and drifts along from one stagnation to another; it has had nothing whatever to do with the formation of its channel. It does not even lie in a bed of its own making. It is a bog and not a river--here and there spreading into pools that wait for an impulse to be given them by the wind, by the whisk of a heron's wing, to form the ripple that will carry some of its water over the calcareous bar it has itself raised by its own inertness. No one could say, looking at the Beune, in which direction it was tending, and it does not seem to have any idea itself. Its sluggishness accumulates obstacles; marsh grass is given time to throw out its fibrous roots, and reeds to build up hurdles across the stream, and the cretaceous particles settle at leisure into walls obstructing it; consequently diverting it. It lurches stupidly from side to side and then listlessly gives up every effort of advance. We stoop to drink of the Vézère. We turn in disgust from the Beune.