THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO
PART 12
VOLUME 2
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 the domestics,
passing to and fro in the galleries, awakened Emily from harassing slumbers:
her unquiet mind had, during the night, presented her with terrific images and
obscure circumstances, concerning her affection and her future life. She now
endeavoured to chase away the impressions they had left on her fancy; but from
imaginary evils she awoke to the consciousness of real ones. Recollecting that
she had parted with Valancourt, perhaps for ever, her heart sickened as memory
revived. But she tried to dismiss the dismal forebodings that crowded on her
mind, and to restrain the sorrow which she could not subdue; efforts which
diffused over the settled melancholy of her countenance an expression of
tempered resignation, as a thin veil, thrown over the features of beauty,
renders them more interesting by a partial concealment. But Madame Montoni
observed nothing in this countenance except its usual paleness, which attracted
her censure. She told her niece, that she had been indulging in fanciful
sorrows, and begged she would have more regard for decorum, than to let the
world see that she could not renounce an improper attachment; at which Emily's
pale cheek became flushed with crimson, but it was the blush of pride, and she
made no 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 preceding night: the
remembrance pressed heavily on her heart, and she turned hastily away from the
object that had awakened it.
The
baggage being at length adjusted, the travellers entered their carriages, and
Emily would have left the chateau without one sigh of regret, had it not been
situated in the neighbourhood of Valancourt's residence.
From a
little eminence she looked back upon Tholouse, and the far-seen plains of
Gascony, beyond which the broken summits of the Pyrenees appeared on the
distant horizon, lighted up by a morning sun. 'Dear pleasant mountains!' said
she to herself, 'how long may it be ere I see ye 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 find that Valancourt still lived for me, I should go in
peace! He will still gaze on ye, gaze when I am far away!'
The
trees, that impended over the high banks of the road and formed a line of
perspective with the distant country, now threatened to exclude the view of
them; but the blueish mountains still appeared beyond the dark foliage, and
Emily continued to lean from the coach window, till at length the closing
branches shut them from her sight.
Another
object soon caught her attention. She had scarcely looked at a person who
walked along the bank, with his hat, in which was the military 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 the carriage put a letter into her hand. He
endeavoured to smile through the despair that overspread his countenance as she
passed on. The remembrance 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 the carriage
with his eyes. He waved his hand, and she continued to gaze till distance
confused his figure, and at length another turn of the road 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 Madame Montoni's woman in a second
carriage, pursued their way over the plains of Languedoc. The presence of this
servant restrained Emily from reading Valancourt's letter, for she did not
choose to expose the emotions it might occasion to the observation of any
person. Yet such was her wish to read this his last communication, that her
trembling hand was every moment on the point of breaking the seal.
At length
they reached the village, where they staid only to change horses, without
alighting, and it was not till they stopped to dine, that Emily had an
opportunity of reading the letter. Though she had never doubted the sincerity
of Valancourt's affection, the fresh assurances she now received of it revived
her spirits; she wept over his letter in tenderness, laid it by to be referred
to when they should be particularly depressed, and then thought of him with
much less anguish than she had done since they parted. Among some other
requests, which were interesting to her, because expressive of his tenderness,
and because a compliance with them seemed to annihilate for a while the pain of
absence, he entreated she would always think of him at sunset. 'You will then
meet me in thought,' said he; 'I shall constantly watch the sun-set, and I
shall be happy in the belief, that your eyes are fixed upon the same object
with mine, and that our minds are conversing. You know not, Emily, the comfort
I promise myself from these moments; but I trust 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 she saw it set without
interruption, and sink towards the province which Valancourt inhabited. After
this hour her mind became far more tranquil and resigned, than it had been
since the marriage of Montoni and her aunt.
During
several days the travellers journeyed over the plains of Languedoc; and then
entering Dauphiny, and winding for some time among the mountains of that
romantic province, they quitted their carriages and began to ascend the Alps.
And here such scenes of sublimity opened upon them as no colours of language
must dare to paint! Emily's mind was even so much engaged with new and
wonderful images, that they sometimes banished the idea of Valancourt, though
they more frequently revived it. These brought to her recollection the
prospects among the Pyrenees, which they had admired together, and had believed
nothing could excel in grandeur. How often did she wish to express to him the
new emotions which this astonishing scenery awakened, and that he could partake
of them! Sometimes too she endeavoured to anticipate his remarks, and almost
imagined him present. She seemed to have arisen into another world, and to have
left every trifling thought, every trifling sentiment, in that below; those
only of grandeur and sublimity now dilated her mind, and elevated the
affections of her heart.
With what
emotions of sublimity, softened by tenderness, did she meet Valancourt in
thought, at the customary hour of sun-set, when, wandering among the Alps, she
watched the glorious orb sink amid their summits, his last tints die away on
their snowy points, and a solemn obscurity steal over the scene! And when the
last gleam had faded, she turned her eyes from the west with somewhat of the
melancholy regret that is experienced after the departure of a beloved friend;
while these lonely feelings were heightened by the spreading gloom, and by the
low sounds, heard only when darkness confines attention, which make the general
stillness more impressive—leaves shook by the air, the last sigh of the breeze
that lingers after sun-set, or the murmur of distant streams.
During
the first days of this journey among the Alps, the scenery exhibited a
wonderful mixture of solitude and inhabitation, of cultivation and barrenness.
On the edge of tremendous precipices, and within the hollow of the cliffs,
below which the clouds often floated, were seen villages, spires, and convent
towers; while green pastures and vineyards spread their hues at the feet of
perpendicular rocks of marble, or of granite, whose points, tufted with alpine
shrubs, or exhibiting only massy crags, rose above each other, till they
terminated in the snow-topt mountain, whence the torrent fell, that thundered
along the valley.
The snow
was not yet melted on the summit of Mount Cenis, over which the travellers
passed; but Emily, as she looked upon its clear lake and extended plain,
surrounded by broken cliffs, saw, in imagination, the verdant beauty it would
exhibit when the snows should be gone, and the shepherds, leading up the
midsummer flocks from Piedmont, to pasture on its flowery summit, should add
Arcadian figures to Arcadian landscape.
As she
descended on the Italian side, the precipices became still more tremendous, and
the prospects still more wild and majestic, over which the shifting lights
threw all the pomp of colouring. Emily delighted to observe the snowy tops of
the mountains under the passing influence of the day, blushing with morning,
glowing with the brightness of noon, or just tinted with the purple evening.
The haunt of man could now only be discovered by the simple hut of the shepherd
and the hunter, or by the rough pine bridge thrown across the torrent, to
assist the latter in his chase of the chamois over crags where, but for this
vestige of man, it would have been believed only the chamois or the wolf dared
to venture. As Emily gazed upon one of these perilous bridges, with the
cataract foaming beneath it, some images came to her mind, which she afterwards
combined 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 awe their billowy
surges rolling below; sometimes, wholly closing upon the scene, they appeared
like a world of chaos, and, at others, spreading thinly, they opened and
admitted partial catches of the landscape—the torrent, whose astounding roar
had never failed, tumbling down the rocky chasm, huge cliffs white with snow,
or the dark summits of the pine forests, that stretched mid-way down the
mountains. But who may describe her rapture, when, having passed through a sea
of vapour, she caught a first view of Italy; when, from the ridge of one of
those tremendous precipices that hang upon Mount Cenis and guard the entrance
of that enchanting country, she looked down through the lower clouds, and, as
they floated away, saw the grassy vales of Piedmont at her feet, and, beyond,
the plains of Lombardy extending to the farthest distance, at which 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 fell beneath, the
waving blackness of the forests of pine and oak, which skirted their feet, or
hung within their recesses, the headlong torrents that, dashing among their
cliffs, sometimes appeared like a cloud of mist, at others like a sheet of
ice—these were features which received a higher character of sublimity from the
reposing beauty of the Italian landscape below, stretching to the wide horizon,
where the same melting blue tint seemed to unite earth and sky.
Madame
Montoni only shuddered as she looked down precipices near whose edge the
chairmen trotted lightly and swiftly, almost, as the chamois bounded, and from
which Emily too recoiled; but with her fears were mingled 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 and Cavigni renewed a
dispute concerning Hannibal's passage over the Alps, Montoni contending that he
entered Italy by way of Mount Cenis, and Cavigni, that he passed over Mount St.
Bernard. The subject brought to Emily's imagination the disasters he had
suffered in this bold and perilous adventure. She saw his vast armies winding
among the defiles, and over the tremendous cliffs of the mountains, which at
night were lighted up by his fires, or by the torches which he caused to be
carried when he pursued his indefatigable march. In the eye of fancy, she
perceived the gleam of arms through the duskiness of night, the glitter of
spears and helmets, and the banners floating dimly on the twilight; while now
and then the blast of a distant trumpet echoed along the defile, and the signal
was answered by a momentary clash of arms. She looked with horror upon the
mountaineers, perched on the higher cliffs, assailing the troops below with
broken fragments of the mountain; on soldiers 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 to behold herself on the dizzy height, whence she had pictured the
descent of others.
Madame
Montoni, meantime, as she looked upon Italy, was contemplating in imagination
the splendour of palaces and the grandeur of castles, such as she believed she
was going to be mistress of at Venice and in the Apennine, and she became, in
idea, little less than a princess. Being no longer under the alarms which had
deterred her from giving entertainments to the beauties of Tholouse, whom
Montoni had mentioned with more eclat to his own vanity than credit to their
discretion, or regard to truth, she determined to give concerts, though she had
neither ear nor taste for music; conversazioni, though she had no talents for
conversation; and to outvie, if possible, in the gaieties of her parties and
the magnificence of her liveries, all the noblesse of Venice. This blissful
reverie was somewhat obscured, when she recollected the Signor, her husband,
who, though he was not averse to the profit which sometimes results from such
parties, had always shewn a contempt of the frivolous parade that sometimes
attends them; till she considered that his pride might be gratified by
displaying, among his own friends, in his native city, the wealth which he had
neglected in France; and she courted again the splendid illusions that had
charmed her before.
The
travellers, as they descended, gradually, exchanged the region of winter for
the genial warmth and beauty of spring. The sky began to assume that serene and
beautiful tint peculiar to the climate of Italy; patches of young verdure,
fragrant shrubs and flowers looked gaily among the rocks, often fringing their
rugged brows, or hanging in tufts from their broken sides; and the buds of the
oak and mountain ash were expanding into foliage. Descending lower, the orange
and the myrtle, every now and then, appeared in some sunny nook, with their
yellow blossoms peeping from among the dark green of their leaves, and mingling
with the scarlet flowers of the pomegranate and the paler ones of the arbutus,
that ran mantling to the crags above; while, lower still, spread the pastures
of Piedmont, where early flocks were cropping the luxuriant herbage of spring.
The river
Doria, which, rising on the summit of Mount Cenis, had dashed for many leagues
over the precipices that bordered the road, now began to assume a less
impetuous, though scarcely less romantic character, as it approached the green
vallies of Piedmont, into which the travellers descended with the evening sun;
and Emily found herself once more amid the tranquil beauty of pastoral scenery;
among flocks and herds, and slopes tufted with woods of lively verdure and with
beautiful shrubs, such as she had often seen waving luxuriantly over the alps above.
The verdure of the pasturage, now varied with the hues of early flowers, among
which were yellow ranunculuses and pansey violets of delicious fragrance, she
had never seen excelled.—Emily almost wished to become a peasant of Piedmont,
to inhabit one of the pleasant embowered cottages which she saw peeping beneath
the cliffs, and to pass her careless hours among these romantic landscapes. To
the hours, the months, she was to pass under the dominion of Montoni, she
looked with apprehension; while those 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 admiration on the imagery around
him; or wandering pensively along the vale below, frequently pausing to look
back upon the scenery, and then, his countenance glowing with the poet's fire,
pursuing his way to some overhanging heights. When she again considered the
time and the distance that were to separate them, that every step she now took
lengthened this distance, her heart sunk, and the surrounding landscape charmed
her no more.
The
travellers, passing Novalesa, reached, after the evening had closed, the small
and antient town of Susa, which had formerly guarded this pass of the Alps into
Piedmont. The heights which command it had, since the invention of artillery,
rendered its fortifications useless; but these romantic heights, seen by
moon-light, with the town below, surrounded by its walls and watchtowers, and partially
illumined, exhibited an interesting picture to Emily. Here they rested for the
night at an inn, which had little accommodation to boast of; but the travellers
brought with them the hunger that gives delicious flavour to the coarsest
viands, and the weariness that ensures repose; and here Emily first caught a
strain of Italian music, on Italian ground. As she sat after supper at a little
window, that opened upon the country, observing an effect of the moon-light on
the broken surface of the mountains, and remembering that on such a night as
this she once had sat with her father and Valancourt, resting upon a cliff of
the Pyrenees, she heard from below the long-drawn notes of a violin, of such
tone and delicacy of expression, as harmonized exactly with the tender emotions
she was indulging, and both charmed and surprised her. Cavigni, who approached
the window, smiled at her surprise. 'This is nothing extraordinary,' said he,
'you will hear the same, perhaps, at every inn on our way. It is one of our landlord's
family who plays, I doubt not,' Emily, as she listened, thought he could be
scarcely less than a professor of music whom she heard; and the sweet and
plaintive strains soon lulled her into a reverie, from which she was very
unwillingly roused by the raillery of Cavigni, and by the voice of Montoni, who
gave orders to a servant to have the carriages ready at an early hour on the
following morning; and added, 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 her dangers, she added a hope,
that she should soon be beyond the view of these horrid mountains, 'which all
the world,' said she, 'should not tempt me to cross again.' Complaining of
fatigue she soon retired to rest, and Emily withdrew to her own room, when she
understood from Annette, her aunt's woman, that Cavigni was nearly right in his
conjecture concerning the musician, who had awakened the violin with so much
taste, for that he was the son of a peasant inhabiting the neighbouring valley.
'He is going to the Carnival at Venice,' added Annette, 'for they say he has a
fine hand at playing, and will get a world of money; and the Carnival is just
going to begin: but for my part, I should like to live among these pleasant
woods and hills, better than in a town; and they say Ma'moiselle, we shall see
no woods, or hills, or fields, at Venice, for that it is built in the very
middle of the sea.'
Emily
agreed with the talkative Annette, that this young man was making a change for
the worse, and could not forbear silently lamenting, that he should be drawn
from the innocence and beauty of these scenes, to the corrupt 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 her fancy; she drew pictures of
social happiness amidst the grand simplicity of nature, such as she feared she
had bade farewel to for ever; and then, the idea of this young Piedmontese,
thus ignorantly sporting with his happiness, returned to her thoughts, and,
glad to escape awhile from the pressure of nearer interests, she indulged her fancy
in composing the 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!
CHAPTER II
TITANIA.
If you will patiently dance in our round,
And see our moon-light revels, go with us.
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
Early on
the following morning, the travellers set out for Turin. The luxuriant plain,
that extends from the feet of the Alps to that magnificent city, was not then,
as now, shaded by an avenue of trees nine miles in length; but plantations of
olives, mulberry and palms, festooned with vines, mingled with the pastoral
scenery, through with the rapid Po, after its descent from the mountains,
wandered to meet the humble Doria at Turin. As they advanced towards this city,
the Alps, seen at some distance, began to appear in all their awful sublimity;
chain rising over chain in long succession, their higher points darkened by the
hovering clouds, sometimes hid, and at others seen shooting up far above them;
while their lower steeps, broken into fantastic forms, were touched with blue
and purplish tints, which, as they changed in light and shade, seemed to open
new scenes to the eye. To the east stretched the plains of Lombardy, with the
towers of Turin rising at a distance; and beyond, the Apennines, bounding the horizon.
The
general magnificence of that city, with its vistas of churches and palaces,
branching from the grand square, each opening to a landscape of the distant
Alps or Apennines, was not only such as Emily had never seen in France, but
such as she had never imagined.
Montoni,
who had been often at Turin, and cared little about views of any kind, did not
comply with his wife's request, that they might survey some of the palaces; but
staying only till the necessary refreshments could be obtained, they set
forward for Venice with all possible rapidity. Montoni's manner, during this
journey, was grave, and even haughty; and towards Madame Montoni he was more
especially reserved; but it was not the reserve of respect so much as of pride
and discontent. Of Emily he took little notice. With Cavigni his conversations
were commonly on political or military topics, such as the convulsed state of
their country rendered at this time particularly interesting, Emily observed,
that, at the mention of any daring exploit, Montoni's eyes lost their
sullenness, and seemed instantaneously to gleam with fire; yet they still
retained somewhat of a lurking cunning, and she sometimes thought that their
fire partook more of the glare of malice than the brightness of valour, though
the latter would well have harmonized with the high chivalric air of his
figure, in which Cavigni, with all his gay and gallant manners, was his
inferior.
On
entering the Milanese, the gentlemen exchanged their French hats for the
Italian cap of scarlet cloth, embroidered; and Emily was somewhat surprised to
observe, that Montoni added to his the military plume, while Cavigni retained
only the feather: which was usually worn with such caps: but she at length
concluded, that Montoni assumed this ensign of a soldier for convenience, as a
means of passing with more safety through a country over-run with parties of
the military.
Over the
beautiful plains of this country the devastations of war were frequently
visible. Where the lands had not been suffered to lie uncultivated, they were
often tracked with the steps of the spoiler; the vines were torn down from the
branches that had supported them, the olives trampled upon the ground, and even
the groves of mulberry trees had been hewn by the enemy to light fires that
destroyed the hamlets and villages of their owners. Emily turned her eyes with
a sigh from these painful vestiges of contention, to the Alps of the Grison,
that overlooked them to the north, whose awful solitudes seemed to offer to
persecuted man a secure asylum.
The
travellers frequently distinguished troops of soldiers moving at a distance;
and they experienced, at the little inns on the road, the scarcity of provision
and other inconveniences, which are a part of the consequence of intestine war;
but they had never reason to be much alarmed for their immediate safety, and
they passed on to Milan with little interruption of any kind, where they staid
not to survey the grandeur of the city, or even to view its vast cathedral,
which was then building.
Beyond
Milan, the country wore the aspect of a ruder devastation; and though every
thing seemed now quiet, the repose was like that of death, spread over
features, which retain the impression of the last convulsions.
It was
not till they had passed the eastern limits of the Milanese, that the
travellers saw any troops since they had left Milan, when, as the evening was
drawing to a close, they descried what appeared to be an army winding onward
along the distant plains, whose spears and other arms caught the last rays of
the sun. As the column advanced through a part of the road, contracted between
two hillocks, some of the commanders, on horseback, were distinguished on a
small eminence, pointing and making signals for the march; while several of the
officers were riding along the line directing its progress, according to the
signs communicated by those above; and others, separating from the vanguard,
which had emerged from the pass, were riding carelessly along the plains at
some distance to the right of the army.
As they
drew nearer, Montoni, distinguishing the feathers that waved in their caps, and
the banners and liveries of the bands that followed them, thought he knew this
to be the small army commanded by the famous captain Utaldo, with whom, as well
as with some of the other chiefs, he was personally acquainted. He, therefore,
gave orders that the carriages should draw up by the side of the road, to await
their arrival, and give them the pass. A faint strain of martial music now
stole by, and, gradually strengthening as the troops approached, Emily
distinguished the drums and trumpets, with the clash of cymbals and of arms,
that were struck by a small party, in time to the march.
Montoni
being now certain that these were the bands of the victorious Utaldo, leaned
from the carriage window, and hailed their general by waving his cap in the
air; which compliment the chief returned by raising his spear, and then letting
it down again suddenly, while some of his officers, who were riding at a distance
from the troops, came up to the carriage, and saluted Montoni as an old
acquaintance. The captain himself soon after arriving, his bands halted while
he conversed with Montoni, whom he appeared much rejoiced to see; and from what
he said, Emily understood that this was a victorious army, returning into their
own principality; while the numerous waggons, that accompanied them, contained
the rich spoils of the enemy, their own wounded soldiers, and the prisoners
they had taken in battle, who were to be ransomed when the peace, then
negociating between the neighbouring states, should be ratified. The chiefs on
the following day were to separate, and each, taking his share of the spoil,
was to return with his own band to his castle. This was therefore to be an
evening of uncommon and general festivity, in commemoration of the victory they
had accomplished together, and of the farewell which the commanders were about
to take of each other.
Emily, as
these officers conversed with Montoni, observed with admiration, tinctured with
awe, their high martial air, mingled with the haughtiness of the nobless of
those days, and heightened by the gallantry of their dress, by the plumes
towering on their caps, the armorial coat, Persian sash, and ancient Spanish
cloak. Utaldo, telling Montoni that his army were going to encamp for the night
near a village at only a few miles distance, invited him to turn back and
partake of their festivity, assuring the ladies also, that they should be
pleasantly accommodated; but Montoni excused himself, adding, that it was his
design to reach Verona that evening; and, after some conversation concerning
the state of the country towards that city, they parted.
The
travellers proceeded without any interruption; but it was some hours after sun-set
before they arrived at Verona, whose beautiful environs were therefore not seen
by Emily till the following morning; when, leaving that pleasant town at an
early hour, they set off for Padua, where they embarked on the Brenta for
Venice. Here the scene was entirely changed; no vestiges of war, such as had
deformed the plains of the Milanese, appeared; on the contrary, all was peace
and elegance. The verdant banks of the Brenta exhibited a continued landscape
of beauty, gaiety, and splendour. Emily gazed with admiration on the villas of
the Venetian noblesse, with their cool porticos and colonnades, overhung with
poplars and cypresses of majestic height and lively verdure; on their rich
orangeries, whose blossoms perfumed the air, and on the luxuriant willows, that
dipped their light leaves in the wave, and sheltered from the sun the gay
parties whose music came at intervals on the breeze. The Carnival did, indeed,
appear to extend from Venice along the whole line of these enchanting shores;
the river was gay with boats passing to that city, exhibiting the fantastic
diversity of a masquerade in the dresses of the people within them; and,
towards evening, groups of dancers frequently were seen beneath the trees.
Cavigni,
meanwhile, informed her of the names of the noblemen to whom the several villas
they passed belonged, adding light sketches of their characters, such as served
to amuse rather than to inform, exhibiting his own wit instead of the
delineation of truth. Emily was sometimes diverted by his conversation; but his
gaiety did not entertain Madame Montoni, as it had formerly done; she was
frequently grave, and Montoni retained his usual reserve.
Nothing
could exceed Emily's admiration on her first view of Venice, with its islets,
palaces, and towers rising out of the sea, whose clear surface reflected the
tremulous picture in all its colours. The sun, sinking in the west, tinted the
waves and the lofty mountains of Friuli, which skirt the northern shores of the
Adriatic, with a saffron glow, while on the marble porticos and colonnades of
St. Mark were thrown the rich lights and shades of evening. As they glided on,
the grander features of this city appeared more distinctly: its terraces,
crowned with airy yet majestic fabrics, touched, as they now were, with the
splendour of the setting sun, appeared as if they had been called up from the
ocean by the wand of an enchanter, rather than reared by mortal hands.
The sun,
soon after, sinking to the lower world, the shadow of the earth stole gradually
over the waves, and then up the towering sides of the mountains of Friuli, till
it extinguished even the last upward beams that had lingered on their summits,
and the melancholy purple of evening drew over them, like a thin veil. How
deep, how beautiful was the tranquillity that wrapped the scene! All nature
seemed to repose; the finest emotions of the soul were alone awake. Emily's
eyes filled with tears of admiration and sublime devotion, as she raised them
over the sleeping world to the vast heavens, and heard the notes of solemn
music, that stole over the waters from a distance. She listened in still
rapture, and no person of the party broke the charm by an enquiry. The sounds
seemed to grow on the air; for so smoothly did the barge glide along, that its
motion was not perceivable, and the fairy city appeared approaching to welcome
the strangers. They now distinguished a female voice, accompanied by a few
instruments, singing a soft and mournful air; and its fine expression, as
sometimes it seemed pleading with the impassioned tenderness of love, and then
languishing into the cadence of hopeless grief, declared, that it flowed from
no feigned sensibility. Ah! thought Emily, as she sighed and remembered
Valancourt, those strains come from the heart!
She
looked round, with anxious enquiry; the deep twilight, that had fallen over the
scene, admitted only imperfect images to the eye, but, at some distance on the
sea, she thought she perceived a gondola: a chorus of voices and instruments
now swelled on the air—so sweet, so solemn! it seemed like the hymn of angels
descending through the silence of night! Now it died away, and fancy almost
beheld the holy choir reascending towards heaven; then again it swelled with
the breeze, trembled awhile, and again died into silence. It brought to Emily's
recollection some lines of her late father, and she repeated in a low voice,
Oft I hear,
Upon the silence of the midnight air,
Celestial voices swell in holy chorus
That bears the soul to heaven!
The deep
stillness, that succeeded, was as expressive as the strain that had just
ceased. It was uninterrupted for several minutes, till a general sigh seemed to
release the company from their enchantment. Emily, however, long indulged the
pleasing sadness, that had stolen upon her spirits; but the gay and busy scene
that appeared, as the barge approached St. Mark's Place, at length roused her
attention. The rising moon, which threw a shadowy light upon the terraces, and
illumined the porticos and magnificent arcades that crowned them, discovered
the various company, whose light steps, soft guitars, and softer voices, echoed
through the colonnades.
The music
they heard before now passed Montoni's barge, in one of the gondolas, of which
several were seen skimming along the moon-light sea, full of gay parties,
catching the cool breeze. Most of these had music, made sweeter by the waves
over which it floated, and by the measured sound of oars, as they dashed the
sparkling tide. Emily gazed, and listened, and thought herself in a fairy
scene; even Madame Montoni was pleased; Montoni congratulated himself on his
return to Venice, which he called the first city in the world, and Cavigni was
more gay and animated than ever.
The barge
passed on to the grand canal, where Montoni's mansion was situated. And here,
other forms of beauty and of grandeur, such as her imagination had never
painted, were unfolded to Emily in the palaces of Sansovino and Palladio, as
she glided along the waves. The air bore no sounds, but those of sweetness,
echoing along each margin of the canal, and from gondolas on its surface, while
groups of masks were seen dancing on the moon-light terraces, and seemed almost
to realize the romance of fairyland.
The barge
stopped before the portico of a large house, from whence a servant of Montoni
crossed the terrace, and immediately the party disembarked. From the portico
they passed a noble hall to a stair-case of marble, which led to a saloon,
fitted up in a style of magnificence that surprised Emily. The walls and
ceilings were adorned with historical and allegorical paintings, in fresco;
silver tripods, depending from chains of the same metal, illumined the
apartment, the floor of which was covered with Indian mats painted in a variety
of colours and devices; the couches and drapery of the lattices were of pale
green silk, embroidered and fringed with green and gold. Balcony lattices
opened upon the grand canal, whence rose a confusion of voices and of musical
instruments, and the breeze that gave freshness to the apartment. Emily,
considering the gloomy temper of Montoni, looked upon the splendid furniture of
this house with surprise, and remembered the report of his being a man of
broken fortune, with astonishment. 'Ah!' said she to herself, 'if Valancourt
could but see this mansion, what peace would it give him! He would then be
convinced that the report was groundless.'
Madame
Montoni seemed to assume the air of a princess; but Montoni was restless and
discontented, and did not even observe the civility of bidding her welcome to
her home.
Soon
after his arrival, he ordered his gondola, and, with Cavigni, went out to
mingle in the scenes of the evening. Madame then became serious and thoughtful.
Emily, who was charmed with every thing she saw, endeavoured to enliven her;
but reflection had not, with Madame Montoni, subdued caprice and ill-humour,
and her answers discovered so much of both, that Emily gave up the attempt of
diverting her, and withdrew to a lattice, to amuse herself with the scene without,
so new and so enchanting.
The first
object that attracted her notice was a group of dancers on the terrace below,
led by a guitar and some other instruments. The girl, who struck the guitar,
and another, who flourished a tambourine, passed on in a dancing step, and with
a light grace and gaiety of heart, that would have subdued the goddess of
spleen in her worst humour. After these came a group of fantastic figures, some
dressed as gondolieri, others as minstrels, while others seemed to defy all description.
They sung in parts, their voices accompanied by a few soft instruments. At a
little distance from the portico they stopped, and Emily distinguished the
verses of Ariosto. They sung of the wars of the Moors against Charlemagne, and
then of the woes of Orlando: afterwards the measure changed, and the melancholy
sweetness of Petrarch succeeded. The magic of his grief was assisted by all
that Italian music and Italian expression, heightened by the enchantments of
Venetian moonlight, could give.
Emily, as
she listened, caught the pensive enthusiasm; her tears flowed silently, while
her fancy bore her far away to France and to Valancourt. Each succeeding
sonnet, more full of charming sadness than the last, seemed to bind the spell
of melancholy: with extreme regret she saw the musicians move on, and her
attention followed the strain till the last faint warble died in air. She then
remained sunk in that pensive tranquillity which soft music leaves on the
mind—a state like that produced by the view of a beautiful landscape by
moon-light, or by the recollection of scenes marked with the tenderness of
friends lost for ever, and with sorrows, which time has mellowed into mild
regret. Such scenes are indeed, to the mind, like 'those faint traces which the
memory bears of music that is past'.
Other
sounds soon awakened her attention: it was the solemn harmony of horns, that
swelled from a distance; and, observing the gondolas arrange themselves along
the margin of the terraces, she threw on her veil, and, stepping into the
balcony, discerned, in the distant perspective of the canal, something like a
procession, floating on the light surface of the water: as it approached, the
horns and other instruments mingled sweetly, and soon after the fabled deities
of the city seemed to have arisen from the ocean; for Neptune, with Venice
personified as his queen, came on the undulating waves, surrounded by tritons
and sea-nymphs. The fantastic splendour of this spectacle, together with the
grandeur of the surrounding palaces, appeared like the vision of a poet
suddenly embodied, and the fanciful images, which it awakened in Emily's mind,
lingered there long after the procession had passed away. She indulged herself
in imagining what might be the manners and delights of a sea-nymph, till she
almost wished to throw off the habit of mortality, and plunge into the green
wave to participate them.
'How
delightful,' said she, 'to live amidst the coral bowers and crystal caverns of
the ocean, with my sister nymphs, and listen to the sounding waters above, and
to the soft shells of the tritons! and then, after sun-set, to skim on the
surface of the waves round wild rocks and along sequestered shores, where,
perhaps, some pensive wanderer comes to weep! Then would I soothe his sorrows
with my sweet music, and offer him from a shell some of the delicious fruit
that hangs round Neptune's palace.'
She was
recalled from her reverie to a mere mortal supper, and could not forbear
smiling at the fancies she had been indulging, and at her conviction of the
serious displeasure, which Madame Montoni would have expressed, could she have
been made acquainted with them.
After
supper, her aunt sat late, but Montoni did not return, and she at length
retired to rest. If Emily had admired the magnificence of the saloon, she was
not less surprised, on observing the half-furnished and forlorn appearance of
the apartments she passed in the way to her chamber, whither she went through
long suites of noble rooms, that seemed, from their desolate aspect, to have
been unoccupied for many years. On the walls of some were the faded remains of
tapestry; from others, painted in fresco, the damps had almost withdrawn both
colours and design. At length she reached her own chamber, spacious, desolate,
and lofty, like the rest, with high lattices that opened towards the Adriatic.
It brought gloomy images to her mind, but the view of the Adriatic soon gave
her others more airy, among which was that of the sea-nymph, whose delights she
had before amused herself with picturing; and, anxious to escape from serious
reflections, she now endeavoured to throw her fanciful ideas into a train, and
concluded the hour with composing the following lines:
THE SEA-NYMPH
Down, down a thousand fathom deep,
Among the sounding seas I go;
Play round the foot of ev'ry steep
Whose cliffs above the ocean grow.
There, within their secret cares,
I hear the mighty rivers roar;
And guide their streams through Neptune's
waves
To bless the green earth's inmost shore:
And bid the freshen'd waters glide,
For fern-crown'd nymphs of lake, or brook,
Through winding woods and pastures wide,
And many a wild, romantic nook.
For this the nymphs, at fall of eave,
Oft dance upon the flow'ry banks,
And sing my name, and garlands weave
To bear beneath the wave their thanks.
In coral bow'rs I love to lie,
And hear the surges roll above,
And through the waters view on high
The proud ships sail, and gay clouds move.
And oft at midnight's stillest hour,
When summer seas the vessel lave,
I love to prove my charmful pow'r
While floating on the moon-light wave.
And when deep sleep the crew has bound,
And the sad lover musing leans
O'er the ship's side, I breathe around
Such strains as speak no mortal means!
O'er the dim waves his searching eye
Sees but the vessel's lengthen'd shade;
Above—the moon and azure sky;
Entranc'd he hears, and half afraid!
Sometimes, a single note I swell,
That, softly sweet, at distance dies;
Then wake the magic of my shell,
And choral voices round me rise!
The trembling youth, charm'd by my strain,
Calls up the crew, who, silent, bend
O'er the high deck, but list in vain;
My song is hush'd, my wonders end!
Within the mountain's woody bay,
Where the tall bark at anchor rides,
At twilight hour, with tritons gay,
I dance upon the lapsing tides:
And with my sister-nymphs I sport,
Till the broad sun looks o'er the floods;
Then, swift we seek our crystal court,
Deep in the wave, 'mid Neptune's woods.
In cool arcades and glassy halls
We pass the sultry hours of noon,
Beyond wherever sun-beam falls,
Weaving sea-flowers in gay festoon.
The while we chant our ditties sweet
To some soft shell that warbles near;
Join'd by the murmuring currents, fleet,
That glide along our halls so clear.
There, the pale pearl and sapphire blue,
And ruby red, and em'rald green,
Dart from the domes a changing hue,
And sparry columns deck the scene.
When the dark storm scowls o'er the deep,
And long, long peals of thunder sound,
On some high cliff my watch I keep
O'er all the restless seas around:
Till on the ridgy wave afar
Comes the lone vessel, labouring slow,
Spreading the white foam in the air,
With sail and top-mast bending low.
Then, plunge I 'mid the ocean's roar,
My way by quiv'ring lightnings shewn,
To guide the bark to peaceful shore,
And hush the sailor's fearful groan.
And if too late I reach its side
To save it from the 'whelming surge,
I call my dolphins o'er the tide,
To bear the crew where isles emerge.
Their mournful spirits soon I cheer,
While round the desert coast I go,
With warbled songs they faintly hear,
Oft as the stormy gust sinks low.
My music leads to lofty groves,
That wild upon the sea-bank wave;
Where sweet fruits bloom, and fresh spring
roves,
And closing boughs the tempest brave.
Then, from the air spirits obey
My potent voice they love so well,
And, on the clouds, paint visions gay,
While strains more sweet at distance swell.
And thus the lonely hours I cheat,
Soothing the ship-wreck'd sailor's heart,
Till from the waves the storms retreat,
And o'er the east the day-beams dart.
Neptune for this oft binds me fast
To rocks below, with coral chain,
Till all the tempest's over-past,
And drowning seamen cry in vain.
Whoe'er ye are that love my lay,
Come, when red sun-set tints the wave,
To the still sands, where fairies play;
There, in cool seas, I love to lave.
To be continued
