The Mysteries of Udolpho

Montoni did not embark on the Brenta, but pursued his way in carriages

across the country, towards the Apennine; during which journey, his

manner to Emily was so particularly severe, that this alone would have

confirmed her late conjecture, had any such confirmation been necessary.

Her senses were now dead to the beautiful country, through which she

travelled. Sometimes she was compelled to smile at the naivete of

Annette, in her remarks on what she saw, and sometimes to sigh, as a

scene of peculiar beauty recalled Valancourt to her thoughts, who was

indeed seldom absent from them, and of whom she could never hope to hear

in the solitude, to which she was hastening.

At length, the travellers began to ascend among the Apennines. The

immense pine-forests, which, at that period, overhung these mountains,

and between which the road wound, excluded all view but of the cliffs

aspiring above, except, that, now and then, an opening through the dark

woods allowed the eye a momentary glimpse of the country below. The

gloom of these shades, their solitary silence, except when the breeze

swept over their summits, the tremendous precipices of the mountains,

that came partially to the eye, each assisted to raise the solemnity of

Emily's feelings into awe; she saw only images of gloomy grandeur, or of

dreadful sublimity, around her; other images, equally gloomy and equally

terrible, gleamed on her imagination. She was going she scarcely

knew whither, under the dominion of a person, from whose arbitrary

disposition she had already suffered so much, to marry, perhaps, a man

who possessed neither her affection, or esteem; or to endure, beyond the

hope of succour, whatever punishment revenge, and that Italian revenge,

might dictate.--

The more she considered what might be the motive of the

journey, the more she became convinced, that it was for the purpose of

concluding her nuptials with Count Morano, with that secrecy, which

her resolute resistance had made necessary to the honour, if not to

the safety, of Montoni. From the deep solitudes, into which she was

immerging, and from the gloomy castle, of which she had heard

some mysterious hints, her sick heart recoiled in despair, and she

experienced, that, though her mind was already occupied by peculiar

distress, it was still alive to the influence of new and local

circumstance; why else did she shudder at the idea of this desolate

castle?

As the travellers still ascended among the pine forests, steep rose over

steep, the mountains seemed to multiply, as they went, and what was the

summit of one eminence proved to be only the base of another. At length,

they reached a little plain, where the drivers stopped to rest the

mules, whence a scene of such extent and magnificence opened below, as

drew even from Madame Montoni a note of admiration. Emily lost, for a

moment, her sorrows, in the immensity of nature. Beyond the amphitheatre

of mountains, that stretched below, whose tops appeared as numerous

almost, as the waves of the sea, and whose feet were concealed by the

forests--extended the campagna of Italy, where cities and rivers, and

woods and all the glow of cultivation were mingled in gay confusion. The

Adriatic bounded the horizon, into which the Po and the Brenta, after

winding through the whole extent of the landscape, poured their fruitful

waves. Emily gazed long on the splendours of the world she was quitting,

of which the whole magnificence seemed thus given to her sight only to

increase her regret on leaving it; for her, Valancourt alone was in that

world; to him alone her heart turned, and for him alone fell her bitter

tears.