She had pursued her flight for more than an hour without even asking herself where she was going, and with no thought save that of escaping from her persecutors. She was now beyond their reach. Still she could not dismiss her fears. Dreading pursuit, she soon resumed her journey, turning her steps in the direction of the Pont du Gard, in the hope that her former companions would not think of looking for her there, and that she might find in the cave they had just deserted a little straw upon which she could rest her weary limbs, and some fragments of food that would keep her alive until she had decided upon her future course. She walked all night. When she found herself near the Pont du Gard day was breaking. The wind was still blowing; but the clouds had scattered before its violence like a flock of frightened sheep, and a pale light was beginning to shine upon the drenched fields. Gloomy and majestic in its century-old impassibility, the Pont du Gard--a colossus upheld by two mountains, and accustomed to defy alike the tempest and the ravages of time--seemed to laugh at the gale which beat against its massive pillars and rushed into its gigantic arches with a sound like thunder. These strong yet graceful arches seem so many frames through which the astonished eyes of the traveller seize the landscape bit by bit: the quiet valley, watered by the Gardon, the luxuriant green of the willows, the clear waves dancing along over their sandy bed, the blue sky reflected there, the mountains that border the horizon. Nothing can be more wildly beautiful than this secluded spot, which is as silent and lonely as if it had never been trodden by the foot of man. Judging from the prodigality with which nature has lavished her riches here, it would seem that she wishes the sole credit of this superb panorama. The massive aqueduct alone attests the existence of man. Looming up in its mighty grandeur--the imperishable monument of a departed civilization, and the only one of its kind--the beholder feels that it is no unworthy rival of the works of Deity. But the majestic scene made no impression upon Tiepoletta. That poor creature, fainting with hunger and fatigue, did not even notice the grandeur around her. With half-closed eyes, arms cramped by the weight of the precious burden upon which she now maintained her hold only by a superhuman effort, and lips parched by the wind, she plodded on with a measured, automatic step. She was hungry; she was thirsty; she was shivering with the cold. Her feet were swollen; but her sufferings were forgotten when she neared her journey's end. She passed under the Pont du Gard. The path on the other side of the aqueduct winds along between the base of the cliffs and the bed of the stream. Under one of these cliffs nature has hewn out a grotto of such liberal dimensions that the people of the neighborhood assemble there on fete days to dance and make merry.