“Then we are more than half ruined, and the Guise will hold both the hind and the stag; but, upon my soul, Gaspard, you must be in love, you look so sorrowful. Is it Yvonne de Mailly? She has beauty and birth; but Favras is poor--nothing but that old clock-case, his tower in the Anjoumois. Still, your lands of Vibrac are broad. Hark! What is that?” As he spoke there was the distant rumbling of thunder, and a chain of light blazed overhead. We all knew what this meant, even the horses. They snorted and trembled, and then their courage came back to them like the brave beasts they were, as we went at a hand gallop through the snow. We had now come to the forest of Loches, that deep, dark wood which makes a fitting setting to the gloomy stronghold of Louis XI. The darkness gained upon us rapidly, and soon it became more and more difficult to follow the road. Now and then, through the gaps in the trees, through dead arms of beech or oak, we could catch the beacon fire on the tower of Beaulieu, and guided ourselves by its glimmer. We had meant to reach Chenonceaux by the morning. Under ordinary circumstances, and with fresh horses such as we had, this would have been well possible; but now, in the driving mist and in the darkness, we would be lucky if we reached the Indrois with the day, and every moment was of import. We floundered along at our best pace, which soon became little more than a shamble, for here, in the dark arcades of the forest, the horses sank above their fetlocks in the soft snow, and ever and again we found ourselves in some shallow ravine or slimy, ice-covered pool. We could barely see ten yards ahead, and must have come to a standstill, but for the incessant lightning that flashed through the gray gloom, and lit the endless colonnades of black trees, stretching as far as the eye could reach on every hand. The wind, high and strong, hissed through the damp leaves, bringing down the melting snow, that clung to them in great drops, and making the boughs overhead creak and groan like the cordage of a ship. Now the blast would die away in low moanings, then it would circle round, and roar through the forest, and sometimes, amidst the din of the elements, we could hear the sullen, plunging crack of some great bough, or perhaps tree itself, as, worm-riddled and old, it fell heavily to earth. We tried to head for what we thought to be the north, keeping the fire of Beaulieu to our left; but now this was no longer visible, and so dark had it become that further progress was all but impossible. It would have been madness, it would have meant death, to halt in the storm, and so we stumbled on as if blind, going we did not know where. And with the issue we had at stake! It was as if the very elements themselves warred against us. At last we came to what seemed like a steep ascent. Up this we let the horses scramble, until we reached a small table-land bereft of trees, and from the height peered into the darkness around.