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 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 château 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 Thoulouse, 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 bluish 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 château 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 sunset, 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 sunset, 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 sunset, 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 snowtopped 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 Thoulouse, whom Montoni had mentioned

with more _eclât_ 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; _conversazione_, 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 shown

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 valleys 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 ancient 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 moonlight, 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 moonlight 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 harmonised 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’amselle, 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 farewell 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 a while 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 moonlight 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!