CHAPTER I
Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see, My heart untravell'd still shall turn to thee. GOLDSMITH
The carriages were at the gates at an early hour; the bustle of thedomestics, passing to and fro in the galleries, awakened Emily fromharassing slumbers: her unquiet mind had, during the night, presentedher with terrific images and obscure circumstances, concerning heraffection and her future life. She now endeavoured to chase away theimpressions they had left on her fancy; but from imaginary evils sheawoke to the consciousness of real ones. Recollecting that she hadparted with Valancourt, perhaps for ever, her heart sickened as memoryrevived. But she tried to dismiss the dismal forebodings that crowded onher mind, and to restrain the sorrow which she could not subdue;efforts which diffused over the settled melancholy of her countenancean expression of tempered resignation, as a thin veil, thrown overthe features of beauty, renders them more interesting by a partialconcealment. But Madame Montoni observed nothing in this countenanceexcept its usual paleness, which attracted her censure. She told herniece, that she had been indulging in fanciful sorrows, and begged shewould have more regard for decorum, than to let the world see that shecould not renounce an improper attachment; at which Emily's pale cheekbecame flushed with crimson, but it was the blush of pride, and she madeno answer. Soon after, Montoni entered the breakfast room, spoke little,and seemed impatient to be gone.
The windows of this room opened upon the garden. As Emily passed them,she saw the spot where she had parted with Valancourt on the precedingnight: the remembrance pressed heavily on her heart, and she turnedhastily away from the object that had awakened it.
The baggage being at length adjusted, the travellers entered theircarriages, and Emily would have left the chateau without one sigh ofregret, had it not been situated in the neighbourhood of Valancourt'sresidence.
From a little eminence she looked back upon Tholouse, and the far-seenplains of Gascony, beyond which the broken summits of the Pyreneesappeared on the distant horizon, lighted up by a morning sun. 'Dearpleasant mountains!' said she to herself, 'how long may it be ere I seeye again, and how much may happen to make me miserable in the interval!Oh, could I now be certain, that I should ever return to ye, and findthat Valancourt still lived for me, I should go in peace! He will stillgaze on ye, gaze when I am far away!'
The trees, that impended over the high banks of the road and formed aline of perspective with the distant country, now threatened to excludethe view of them; but the blueish mountains still appeared beyond thedark foliage, and Emily continued to lean from the coach window, till atlength the closing branches shut them from her sight.
Another object soon caught her attention. She had scarcely looked ata person who walked along the bank, with his hat, in which was themilitary feather, drawn over his eyes, before, at the sound of wheels,he suddenly turned, and she perceived that it was Valancourt himself,who waved his hand, sprung into the road, and through the window of thecarriage put a letter into her hand. He endeavoured to smile throughthe despair that overspread his countenance as she passed on. Theremembrance of that smile seemed impressed on Emily's mind for ever.She leaned from the window, and saw him on a knoll of the broken bank,leaning against the high trees that waved over him, and pursuing thecarriage with his eyes. He waved his hand, and she continued to gazetill distance confused his figure, and at length another turn of theroad entirely separated him from her sight.
Having stopped to take up Signor Cavigni at a chateau on the road,the travellers, of whom Emily was disrespectfully seated with MadameMontoni's woman in a second carriage, pursued their way over the plainsof Languedoc. The presence of this servant restrained Emily from readingValancourt's letter, for she did not choose to expose the emotions itmight occasion to the observation of any person. Yet such was her wishto read this his last communication, that her trembling hand was everymoment on the point of breaking the seal.
At length they reached the village, where they staid only to changehorses, without alighting, and it was not till they stopped to dine,that Emily had an opportunity of reading the letter. Though she hadnever doubted the sincerity of Valancourt's affection, the freshassurances she now received of it revived her spirits; she wept over hisletter in tenderness, laid it by to be referred to when they should beparticularly depressed, and then thought of him with much less anguishthan she had done since they parted. Among some other requests, whichwere interesting to her, because expressive of his tenderness, andbecause a compliance with them seemed to annihilate for a while the painof absence, he entreated she would always think of him at sunset. 'Youwill then meet me in thought,' said he; 'I shall constantly watch thesun-set, and I shall be happy in the belief, that your eyes are fixedupon the same object with mine, and that our minds are conversing. Youknow not, Emily, the comfort I promise myself from these moments; but Itrust you will experience it.'
It is unnecessary to say with what emotion Emily, on this evening,watched the declining sun, over a long extent of plains, on which shesaw it set without interruption, and sink towards the province whichValancourt inhabited. After this hour her mind became far more tranquiland resigned, than it had been since the marriage of Montoni and heraunt.
During several days the travellers journeyed over the plains ofLanguedoc; and then entering Dauphiny, and winding for some time amongthe mountains of that romantic province, they quitted their carriagesand began to ascend the Alps. And here such scenes of sublimity openedupon them as no colours of language must dare to paint! Emily's mind waseven so much engaged with new and wonderful images, that they sometimesbanished the idea of Valancourt, though they more frequently revivedit. These brought to her recollection the prospects among the Pyrenees,which they had admired together, and had believed nothing could excelin grandeur. How often did she wish to express to him the new emotionswhich this astonishing scenery awakened, and that he could partakeof them! Sometimes too she endeavoured to anticipate his remarks, andalmost imagined him present. She seemed to have arisen into anotherworld, and to have left every trifling thought, every triflingsentiment, in that below; those only of grandeur and sublimity nowdilated her mind, and elevated the affections of her heart.
With what emotions of sublimity, softened by tenderness, did she meetValancourt in thought, at the customary hour of sun-set, when, wanderingamong the Alps, she watched the glorious orb sink amid their summits,his last tints die away on their snowy points, and a solemn obscuritysteal over the scene! And when the last gleam had faded, she turnedher eyes from the west with somewhat of the melancholy regret that isexperienced after the departure of a beloved friend; while these lonelyfeelings were heightened by the spreading gloom, and by the low sounds,heard only when darkness confines attention, which make the generalstillness more impressive--leaves shook by the air, the last sigh of thebreeze that lingers after sun-set, or the murmur of distant streams.
During the first days of this journey among the Alps, the sceneryexhibited a wonderful mixture of solitude and inhabitation, ofcultivation and barrenness. On the edge of tremendous precipices, andwithin the hollow of the cliffs, below which the clouds often floated,were seen villages, spires, and convent towers; while green pasturesand vineyards spread their hues at the feet of perpendicular rocksof marble, or of granite, whose points, tufted with alpine shrubs, orexhibiting only massy crags, rose above each other, till they terminatedin the snow-topt mountain, whence the torrent fell, that thundered alongthe valley.
The snow was not yet melted on the summit of Mount Cenis, over whichthe travellers passed; but Emily, as she looked upon its clear lake andextended plain, surrounded by broken cliffs, saw, in imagination, theverdant beauty it would exhibit when the snows should be gone, and theshepherds, leading up the midsummer flocks from Piedmont, to pasture onits flowery summit, should add Arcadian figures to Arcadian landscape.
As she descended on the Italian side, the precipices became still moretremendous, and the prospects still more wild and majestic, over whichthe shifting li
ghts threw all the pomp of colouring. Emily delighted toobserve the snowy tops of the mountains under the passing influence ofthe day, blushing with morning, glowing with the brightness of noon, orjust tinted with the purple evening. The haunt of man could now only bediscovered by the simple hut of the shepherd and the hunter, or by therough pine bridge thrown across the torrent, to assist the latter in hischase of the chamois over crags where, but for this vestige of man, itwould have been believed only the chamois or the wolf dared to venture.As Emily gazed upon one of these perilous bridges, with the cataractfoaming beneath it, some images came to her mind, which she afterwardscombined in the following
STORIED SONNET
The weary traveller, who, all night long, Has climb'd among the Alps' tremendous steeps, Skirting the pathless precipice, where throng Wild forms of danger; as he onward creeps If, chance, his anxious eye at distance sees The mountain-shepherd's solitary home, Peeping from forth the moon-illumin'd trees, What sudden transports to his bosom come! But, if between some hideous chasm yawn, Where the cleft pine a doubtful bridge displays, In dreadful silence, on the brink, forlorn He stands, and views in the faint rays Far, far below, the torrent's rising surge, And listens to the wild impetuous roar; Still eyes the depth, still shudders on the verge, Fears to return, nor dares to venture o'er. Desperate, at length the tottering plank he tries, His weak steps slide, he shrieks, he sinks--he dies!
Emily, often as she travelled among the clouds, watched in silent awetheir billowy surges rolling below; sometimes, wholly closing upon thescene, they appeared like a world of chaos, and, at others, spreadingthinly, they opened and admitted partial catches of the landscape--thetorrent, whose astounding roar had never failed, tumbling down the rockychasm, huge cliffs white with snow, or the dark summits of the pineforests, that stretched mid-way down the mountains. But who may describeher rapture, when, having passed through a sea of vapour, she caughta first view of Italy; when, from the ridge of one of those tremendousprecipices that hang upon Mount Cenis and guard the entrance of thatenchanting country, she looked down through the lower clouds, and, asthey floated away, saw the grassy vales of Piedmont at her feet, and,beyond, the plains of Lombardy extending to the farthest distance, atwhich appeared, on the faint horizon, the doubtful towers of Turin?
The solitary grandeur of the objects that immediately surrounded her,the mountain-region towering above, the deep precipices that fellbeneath, the waving blackness of the forests of pine and oak, whichskirted their feet, or hung within their recesses, the headlong torrentsthat, dashing among their cliffs, sometimes appeared like a cloud ofmist, at others like a sheet of ice--these were features which receiveda higher character of sublimity from the reposing beauty of the Italianlandscape below, stretching to the wide horizon, where the same meltingblue tint seemed to unite earth and sky.
Madame Montoni only shuddered as she looked down precipices near whoseedge the chairmen trotted lightly and swiftly, almost, as the chamoisbounded, and from which Emily too recoiled; but with her fears weremingled such various emotions of delight, such admiration, astonishment,and awe, as she had never experienced before.
Meanwhile the carriers, having come to a landing-place, stopped to rest,and the travellers being seated on the point of a cliff, Montoni andCavigni renewed a dispute concerning Hannibal's passage over the Alps,Montoni contending that he entered Italy by way of Mount Cenis, andCavigni, that he passed over Mount St. Bernard. The subject broughtto Emily's imagination the disasters he had suffered in this bold andperilous adventure. She saw his vast armies winding among the defiles,and over the tremendous cliffs of the mountains, which at night werelighted up by his fires, or by the torches which he caused to be carriedwhen he pursued his indefatigable march. In the eye of fancy, sheperceived the gleam of arms through the duskiness of night, the glitterof spears and helmets, and the banners floating dimly on the twilight;while now and then the blast of a distant trumpet echoed along thedefile, and the signal was answered by a momentary clash of arms. Shelooked with horror upon the mountaineers, perched on the higher cliffs,assailing the troops below with broken fragments of the mountain; onsoldiers and elephants tumbling headlong down the lower precipices; and,as she listened to the rebounding rocks, that followed their fall,the terrors of fancy yielded to those of reality, and she shuddered tobehold herself on the dizzy height, whence she had pictured the descentof others.
Madame Montoni, meantime, as she looked upon Italy, was contemplating inimagination the splendour of palaces and the grandeur of castles, suchas she believed she was going to be mistress of at Venice and in theApennine, and she became, in idea, little less than a princess. Beingno longer under the alarms which had deterred her from givingentertainments to the beauties of Tholouse, whom Montoni had mentionedwith more eclat to his own vanity than credit to their discretion, orregard to truth, she determined to give concerts, though she had neitherear nor taste for music; conversazioni, though she had no talents forconversation; and to outvie, if possible, in the gaieties of her partiesand the magnificence of her liveries, all the noblesse of Venice. Thisblissful reverie was somewhat obscured, when she recollected the Signor,her husband, who, though he was not averse to the profit which sometimesresults from such parties, had always shewn a contempt of the frivolousparade that sometimes attends them; till she considered that his pridemight be gratified by displaying, among his own friends, in his nativecity, the wealth which he had neglected in France; and she courted againthe splendid illusions that had charmed her before.
The travellers, as they descended, gradually, exchanged the region ofwinter for the genial warmth and beauty of spring. The sky began toassume that serene and beautiful tint peculiar to the climate of Italy;patches of young verdure, fragrant shrubs and flowers looked gaily amongthe rocks, often fringing their rugged brows, or hanging in tuftsfrom their broken sides; and the buds of the oak and mountain ash wereexpanding into foliage. Descending lower, the orange and the myrtle,every now and then, appeared in some sunny nook, with their yellowblossoms peeping from among the dark green of their leaves, and minglingwith the scarlet flowers of the pomegranate and the paler ones of thearbutus, that ran mantling to the crags above; while, lower still,spread the pastures of Piedmont, where early flocks were cropping theluxuriant herbage of spring.
The river Doria, which, rising on the summit of Mount Cenis, had dashedfor many leagues over the precipices that bordered the road, now beganto assume a less impetuous, though scarcely less romantic character, asit approached the green vallies of Piedmont, into which the travellersdescended with the evening sun; and Emily found herself once more amidthe tranquil beauty of pastoral scenery; among flocks and herds, andslopes tufted with woods of lively verdure and with beautiful shrubs,such as she had often seen waving luxuriantly over the alps above. Theverdure of the pasturage, now varied with the hues of early flowers,among which were yellow ranunculuses and pansey violets of deliciousfragrance, she had never seen excelled.--Emily almost wished to becomea peasant of Piedmont, to inhabit one of the pleasant embowered cottageswhich she saw peeping beneath the cliffs, and to pass her careless hoursamong these romantic landscapes. To the hours, the months, she was topass under the dominion of Montoni, she looked with apprehension; whilethose which were departed she remembered with regret and sorrow.
In the present scenes her fancy often gave her the figure of Valancourt,whom she saw on a point of the cliffs, gazing with awe and admirationon the imagery around him; or wandering pensively along the valebelow, frequently pausing to look back upon the scenery, and then,his countenance glowing with the poet's fire, pursuing his way to someoverhanging heights. When she again considered the time and the distancethat were to separate them, that every step she now took lengthened thisdistance, her heart sunk, and the surrounding landscape charmed her nomore.
The travellers, passing Novalesa, reached, after the evening had closed,the small and antient town of Susa, which had formerly guarded this passof the Alps into Piedmont. The heights which command it h
ad, since theinvention of artillery, rendered its fortifications useless; but theseromantic heights, seen by moon-light, with the town below, surroundedby its walls and watchtowers, and partially illumined, exhibited aninteresting picture to Emily. Here they rested for the night at an inn,which had little accommodation to boast of; but the travellers broughtwith them the hunger that gives delicious flavour to the coarsestviands, and the weariness that ensures repose; and here Emily firstcaught a strain of Italian music, on Italian ground. As she sat aftersupper at a little window, that opened upon the country, observing aneffect of the moon-light on the broken surface of the mountains, andremembering that on such a night as this she once had sat with herfather and Valancourt, resting upon a cliff of the Pyrenees, she heardfrom below the long-drawn notes of a violin, of such tone and delicacyof expression, as harmonized exactly with the tender emotions she wasindulging, and both charmed and surprised her. Cavigni, who approachedthe window, smiled at her surprise. 'This is nothing extraordinary,'said he, 'you will hear the same, perhaps, at every inn on our way. Itis one of our landlord's family who plays, I doubt not,' Emily, as shelistened, thought he could be scarcely less than a professor of musicwhom she heard; and the sweet and plaintive strains soon lulled her intoa reverie, from which she was very unwillingly roused by the railleryof Cavigni, and by the voice of Montoni, who gave orders to a servant tohave the carriages ready at an early hour on the following morning; andadded, that he meant to dine at Turin.
Madame Montoni was exceedingly rejoiced to be once more on level ground;and, after giving a long detail of the various terrors she had suffered,which she forgot that she was describing to the companions of herdangers, she added a hope, that she should soon be beyond the view ofthese horrid mountains, 'which all the world,' said she, 'should nottempt me to cross again.' Complaining of fatigue she soon retired torest, and Emily withdrew to her own room, when she understood fromAnnette, her aunt's woman, that Cavigni was nearly right in hisconjecture concerning the musician, who had awakened the violin withso much taste, for that he was the son of a peasant inhabiting theneighbouring valley. 'He is going to the Carnival at Venice,' addedAnnette, 'for they say he has a fine hand at playing, and will get aworld of money; and the Carnival is just going to begin: but for mypart, I should like to live among these pleasant woods and hills, betterthan in a town; and they say Ma'moiselle, we shall see no woods, orhills, or fields, at Venice, for that it is built in the very middle ofthe sea.'
Emily agreed with the talkative Annette, that this young man was makinga change for the worse, and could not forbear silently lamenting, thathe should be drawn from the innocence and beauty of these scenes, to thecorrupt ones of that voluptuous city.
When she was alone, unable to sleep, the landscapes of her native home,with Valancourt, and the circumstances of her departure, haunted herfancy; she drew pictures of social happiness amidst the grand simplicityof nature, such as she feared she had bade farewel to for ever; andthen, the idea of this young Piedmontese, thus ignorantly sporting withhis happiness, returned to her thoughts, and, glad to escape awhile fromthe pressure of nearer interests, she indulged her fancy in composingthe following lines.
THE PIEDMONTESE
Ah, merry swain, who laugh'd along the vales, And with your gay pipe made the mountains ring, Why leave your cot, your woods, and thymy gales, And friends belov'd, for aught that wealth can bring? He goes to wake o'er moon-light seas the string, Venetian gold his untaught fancy hails! Yet oft of home his simple carols sing, And his steps pause, as the last Alp he scales. Once more he turns to view his native scene-- Far, far below, as roll the clouds away, He spies his cabin 'mid the pine-tops green, The well-known woods, clear brook, and pastures gay; And thinks of friends and parents left behind, Of sylvan revels, dance, and festive song; And hears the faint reed swelling in the wind; And his sad sighs the distant notes prolong! Thus went the swain, till mountain-shadows fell, And dimm'd the landscape to his aching sight; And must he leave the vales he loves so well! Can foreign wealth, and shows, his heart delight? No, happy vales! your wild rocks still shall hear His pipe, light sounding on the morning breeze; Still shall he lead the flocks to streamlet clear, And watch at eve beneath the western trees. Away, Venetian gold--your charm is o'er! And now his swift step seeks the lowland bow'rs, Where, through the leaves, his cottage light ONCE MORE Guides him to happy friends, and jocund hours. Ah, merry swain! that laugh along the vales, And with your gay pipe make the mountains ring, Your cot, your woods, your thymy-scented gales-- And friends belov'd--more joy than wealth can bring!