The Mysteries of Udolpho

St. Aubert sometimes amused himself with botanizing, while Valancourt

and Emily strolled on; he pointing out to her notice the objects that

particularly charmed him, and reciting beautiful passages from such of

the Latin and Italian poets as he had heard her admire. In the pauses of

conversation, when he thought himself not observed, he frequently fixed

his eyes pensively on her countenance, which expressed with so much

animation the taste and energy of her mind; and when he spoke again,

there was a peculiar tenderness in the tone of his voice, that defeated

any attempt to conceal his sentiments. By degrees these silent pauses

became more frequent; till Emily, only, betrayed an anxiety to interrupt

them; and she; who had been hitherto reserved, would now talk again,

and again, of the woods and the vallies and the mountains, to avoid the

danger of sympathy and silence.

From Beaujeu the road had constantly ascended, conducting the travellers

into the higher regions of the air, where immense glaciers exhibited

their frozen horrors, and eternal snow whitened the summits of the

mountains. They often paused to contemplate these stupendous scenes,

and, seated on some wild cliff, where only the ilex or the larch could

flourish, looked over dark forests of fir, and precipices where human

foot had never wandered, into the glen--so deep, that the thunder of the

torrent, which was seen to foam along the bottom, was scarcely heard to

murmur.

Over these crags rose others of stupendous height, and fantastic

shape; some shooting into cones; others impending far over their base,

in huge masses of granite, along whose broken ridges was often lodged

a weight of snow, that, trembling even to the vibration of a sound,

threatened to bear destruction in its course to the vale. Around, on

every side, far as the eye could penetrate, were seen only forms of

grandeur--the long perspective of mountain-tops, tinged with ethereal

blue, or white with snow; vallies of ice, and forests of gloomy fir.

The serenity and clearness of the air in these high regions were

particularly delightful to the travellers; it seemed to inspire them

with a finer spirit, and diffused an indescribable complacency over

their minds. They had no words to express the sublime emotions they

felt. A solemn expression characterized the feelings of St. Aubert;

tears often came to his eyes, and he frequently walked away from his

companions. Valancourt now and then spoke, to point to Emily's notice

some feature of the scene. The thinness of the atmosphere, through which

every object came so distinctly to the eye, surprised and deluded her;

who could scarcely believe that objects, which appeared so near, were,

in reality, so distant. The deep silence of these solitudes was broken

only at intervals by the scream of the vultures, seen cowering round

some cliff below, or by the cry of the eagle sailing high in the air;

except when the travellers listened to the hollow thunder that sometimes

muttered at their feet. While, above, the deep blue of the heavens was

unobscured by the lightest cloud, half way down the mountains, long

billows of vapour were frequently seen rolling, now wholly excluding the

country below, and now opening, and partially revealing its features.