inevitable heartache.

Toward mid-afternoon a solitary mischance threw a passing shadow upon
his content. As he trudged along the river road, on the last lap of his
journey--Nant almost in sight--he heard a curious, intermittent rumble
on a steep hillside whose foot was skirted by the road, and sought its
cause barely in time to leap for life out of the path of a great
boulder that, dislodged from its bed, possibly by last night's deluge,
was hurtling downhill with such momentum that it must have crushed
Duchemin to a pulp had he been less alert.

Striking the road with an impact that left a deep, saucer-shaped dent,
with one final bound the huge stone, amid vast splashings, found its
last resting place in the river.

Duchemin moved out of the way of the miniature avalanche that followed,
and for some minutes stood reviewing with a truculent eye the face of
the hillside. But nothing moved thereon, it was quite bare of good
cover, little more than a slant of naked earth and shale, dotted
manywhere with boulders, cousins to that which sought his life--none,
however, so large. If human agency had moved it, the stone had come
from the high skyline of the hill; and by the time one could climb to
this last, Duchemin was sure, there would be nobody there to find.

The remainder of the afternoon was wasted utterly on the terrasse of
the Café de l'Univers, with the château ever in view, wishing it were
convenable to make one's duty call without more delay. But it wasn't;
not to wait a decent interval would be self-betraying, since Duchemin
had no longer any immediate intention of moving on from Nant; finally,
he rather hoped to get news at Millau that would strengthen a prayer to