The plain was gloomy; low-hanging, black, crisp fogs crept over the hills and wrenched themselves away like smoke: there were whitish gleams in the clouds; a strong breeze which blew in from the sea produced a sound in all quarters of the horizon, as of someone moving furniture; everything that could be seen assumed attitudes of terror. How many things shiver beneath these vast breaths of the night!

He was stiff with cold; he had eaten nothing since the night before; he vaguely recalled his other nocturnal trip in the vast plain in the neighborhood of Digne, eight years previously, and it seemed but yesterday.

The hour struck from a distant tower; he asked the boy:⁠—

“What time is it?”

“Seven o’clock, sir; we shall reach Arras at eight; we have but three leagues still to go.”