He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all.  His energies were expended in action.  He sat as a part of the ruins, and the moon turned his shadow Westward from the South.  Overhead, as she declined, long ripples of silver cloud were imperceptibly stealing toward her.  They were the van of a tempest.  He did not observe them or the leaves beginning to chatter.  When he again pursued his course with his face to the Rhine, a huge mountain appeared to rise sheer over him, and he had it in his mind to scale it.  He got no nearer to the base of it for all his vigorous outstepping.  The ground began to dip; he lost sight of the sky.  Then heavy, thunder-drops streak his cheek, the leaves were singing, the earth breathed, it was black before him, and behind.  All at once the thunder spoke.  The mountain he had marked was bursting over him.

Up startled the whole forest in violet fire.  He saw the country at the foot of the hills to the bounding Rhine gleam, quiver, extinguished.  Then there were pauses; and the lightning seemed as the eye of heaven, and the thunder as the tongue of heaven, each alternately addressing him; filling him with awful rapture.  Alone there—­sole human creature among the grandeurs and mysteries of storm—­he felt the representative of his kind, and his spirit rose, and marched, and exulted, let it be glory, let it be ruin!  Lower down the lightened abysses of air rolled the wrathful crash; then white thrusts of light were darted from the sky, and great curving ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a second, were supernaturally agitated, and vanished.  Then a shrill song roused in the leaves and the herbage.  Prolonged and louder it sounded, as deeper and heavier the deluge pressed.  A mighty force of water satisfied the desire of the earth.  Even in this, drenched as he was by the first outpouring, Richard had a savage pleasure.  Keeping in motion, he was scarcely conscious of the wet, and the grateful breath of the weeds was refreshing.  Suddenly he stopped short, lifting a curious nostril.  He fancied he smelt meadow-sweet.  He had never seen the flower in Rhineland—­never thought of it; and it would hardly be met with in a forest.  He was sure he smelt it fresh in dews.  His little companion wagged a miserable wet tail some way in advance.  He went an slowly, thinking indistinctly.  After two or three steps he stooped and stretched out his hand to feel for the flower, having, he knew not why, a strong wish to verify its growth there.  Groping about, his hand encountered something warm that started at his touch, and he, with the instinct we have, seized it, and lifted it to look at it.  The creature was very small, evidently quite young.  Richard’s eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, were able to discern it for what it was, a tiny leveret, and ha supposed that the dog had probably frightened its dam just before he found it.  He put the little thing on one hand in his breast, and stepped out rapidly as before.