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.