s 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.

It was there the Bohemians had encamped a few days before; it was there
Tiepoletta had given birth to the tiny creature whom she had just
rescued from the heartless wretches who had conspired to despoil a
mother of her child. This comfortless cavern where she h