The least Albano could do was to fly on foot down the mountain, to wade along with the brook, which was running away into the pale-green birch thicket to cool itself. Often before had his Robinsonading mania blown him to all points and leaves of the wind-rose,[29] and he loved to go with an unknown road a pretty piece of way to see what way it would itself take. He ran along on the silver Ariadne's thread of the brook, deep into the green labyrinth, and proposed, in fact, to come out through the back door of the long thicket upon a distant prospect. He could not accomplish it,--the birches grew now lighter, now darker, the brook broader,--the larks seemed to sing, out there, far and high overhead;--but he was obstinate. Extremes had from of old a magnetic polarity for him; as the medium had only points of indifference. Thus, for example, except the highest degree of the barometer, no other was so agreeable to him as the lowest, and the shortest day was as welcome as the longest; but the day after either was fatal.[30] At last, after the progress of some hours in time and space, he heard, beyond the lightening birches, and through a noise louder than that of the brook, his name uttered repeatedly, in low tones of commendation, by two female voices. Instantly he galloped panting back again, indifferent to the risk of lungs and life. He heard his name long after again called out on all sides of him, but in a cry;--it was his private patron saint, the castellain of the hut, who fired these shots of distress on his account at the foot of the mountain.