Veronique turned rapidly to the dismal plain, followed by her guide. She leaped her horse across the ditch and rode at full gallop across the drear expanse, seeming to take a savage pleasure in contemplating that vast image of desolation. Farrabesche was right. No power, no will could put to any use whatever that soil which resounded under the horses’ feet as though it were hollow. This effect was produced by the natural porousness of the clay; but there were fissures also through which the water flowed away, no doubt to some distant source. “There are many souls like this,” thought Veronique, stopping her horse after she had ridden at full speed for fifteen or twenty minutes. She remained motionless and thoughtful in the midst of this desert, where there was neither animal nor insect life and where the birds never flew. The plain of Montegnac was at least pebbly or sandy; on it were places where a few inches of soil did give a foothold for the roots of certain plains; but here the ungrateful chalk, neither stone nor earth, repelled even the eye, which was forced to turn for relief to the blue of the ether. After examining the bounds of her forest and the meadows purchased by her husband, Veronique returned toward the outlet of the Gabou, but slowly. She then saw Farrabesche gazing into a sort of ditch which looked like one a speculator might have dug into this desolate corner of the earth expecting Nature to give up some hidden treasure. “What is the matter?” asked Veronique, noticing on that manly face an expression of deep sadness. “Madame, I owe my life to that ditch; or rather, to speak more correctly, I owe to it time for repentance, time to redeem my sins in the eyes of men.” This method of explaining life so affected Madame Graslin that she stopped her horse on the brink of the ditch. “I was hiding there, madame. The ground is so resonant that when my ear was against it I could hear the horses of the gendarmerie, or even the footsteps of the soldiers, which are always peculiar. That gave me time to escape up the Gabou to a place where I had a horse, and I always managed to put several miles between myself and my pursuers. Catherine used to bring me food during the night; if she did not find me I always found the bread and wine in a hole covered with a rock.” This recollection of his wandering and criminal life, which might have injured Farrabesche with some persons, met with the most indulgent pity from Madame Graslin. She rode hastily on toward the Gabou, followed by her guide. While she measured with her eye this opening, through which could be seen the long valley, so smiling on one side, so ruined on the other, and at its lower end, a league away, the terraced hill-sides back of Montegnac, Farrabesche said:-- “There’ll be a famous rush of water in a few days.”