The Mysteries of Udolpho Part 17

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 n.o.blesse, 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 sh.o.r.es; the river was gay with boats pa.s.sing 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 n.o.blemen to whom the several villas they pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.es 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 impa.s.sioned tenderness of love, and then languis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed on to the grand ca.n.a.l, 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 pa.s.sed a n.o.ble 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 a.s.sume 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, pa.s.sed on in a dancing step, and with a light grace and gaiety of heart, that would have subdued the G.o.ddess 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 a.s.sisted 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 pa.s.sed 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 sh.e.l.ls of the tritons! and then, after sun-set, to skim on the surface of the waves round wild rocks and along sequestered sh.o.r.es, where, perhaps, some pensive wanderer comes to weep!

Then would I soothe his sorrows with my sweet music, and offer him from a sh.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed in the way to her chamber, whither she went through long suites of n.o.ble 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, s.p.a.cious, 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 sh.o.r.e:

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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+p'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 sh.e.l.l, 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 gla.s.sy halls We pa.s.s 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 s.h.i.+p-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.

CHAPTER III

He is a great observer, and he looks Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays, he hears no music; Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort, As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit that could be mov'd to smile at any thing.

Such men as he be never at heart's ease, While they behold a greater than themselves.