The Mysteries of Udolpho

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.