A slight smile crept over the waiter's face, and Jeanne would have liked to run away; when they came downstairs again, an hour later, she hardly dared pass the servants, feeling sure that they would whisper and laugh behind her back. She felt vexed with Julien for not understanding her feelings, and wondering at his want of delicacy; it raised a sort of barrier between them, and, for the first time, she understood that two people can never be in perfect sympathy; they may pass through life side by side, seemingly in perfect union, but neither quite understands the other, and every soul must of necessity be for ever lonely. They stayed three days in the little town which was like a furnace, for every breath of wind was shut out by the mountains. Then they made out a plan of the places they should visit, and decided to hire some horses. They started one morning at daybreak on the two wiry little Corsican horses they had obtained, and accompanied by a guide mounted on a mule which also carried some provisions, for inns are unknown in this wild country. At first the road ran along the bay, but soon it turned into a shallow valley leading to the mountains. The uncultivated country seemed perfectly bare, and the sides of the hills were covered with tall weeds, turned sere and yellow by the burning heat; they often crossed ravines where only a narrow stream still ran with a gurgling sound, and occasionally they met a mountaineer, sometimes on foot, sometimes riding his little horse, or bestriding a donkey no bigger than a dog; these mountaineers always carried a loaded gun which might be old and rusty, but which became a very formidable weapon in their hands. The air was filled with the pungent smell of the aromatic plants with which the isle is covered, and the road sloped gradually upwards, winding round the mountains. The peaks of blue and pink granite made the island look like a fairy palace, and, from the heights, the forests of immense chestnut trees on the lower parts of the hills looked like green thickets. Sometimes the guide would point to some steep height, and mention a name; Jeanne and Julien would look, at first seeing nothing, but at last discovering the summit of the mountain. It was a village, a little granite hamlet, hanging and clinging like a bird's nest to the vast mountain. Jeanne got tired of going at a walking pace for so long. "Let us gallop a little," she said, whipping up her horse.