The Mysteries of Udolpho
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!
CHAPTER II
_Titania_. If you will patiently dance in our round,
And see our moonlight 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 harmonised 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