I darted forward to the spot where the bridge had stood, but nothing now remained of it but some broken fragments attached to the piles, which, driven into the high bank, had served as the foundation. The growing obscurity of the twilight, the trees that overhung the banks, the height of the banks themselves, which at that spot rose full twenty feet above the stream, the rushing and rippling of the current, which, there, considerably confined by its bed, hurried on towards a sharp turn which it took about fifty yards below; all served to prevent me seeing distinctly what were the objects on the surface of the water. Fragments of the bridge there certainly were; but I saw neither Madame de Villardin nor her husband, though the whirling of a part of the woodwork in one of the eddies of the river made me for a moment think I beheld the struggles of a living creature. I paused but for a single instant to calculate what were best to do; and then, seeing that there was nothing else to be done, I leaped from the high bank at once into the stream, and as soon as I rose after the first plunge, I struck rapidly down the current, in order, by exceeding its own speed, to come up with whatever objects it was carrying down. Almost at the turn of the river, where the water, in circling round the point, drifted strongly against the bank, which was here again less steep, at least on one side, I saw, amongst some broken pieces of wood, a larger object, impeded in its course down the stream by some projecting stones and roots of trees, and the next moment I grasped the arm of Monsieur de Villardin. He seemed perfectly insensible; but, springing to the shore, I dragged him up the bank, and laid him upon the turf. Still he made no movement; but, as I confess, that from various feelings which I need not explain, I felt more interested in the fate of Madame de Villardin than even in his own, I left him at once, and again plunging into the stream, I swam rapidly round the little peninsula I have mentioned.