The Mysteries of Udolpho

After conversing for a few minutes with the abbess, the Countess rose to

go. This was the moment, which Blanche had anticipated with such eager

expectation, the summit from which she looked down upon the fairy-land

of happiness, and surveyed all its enchantment; was it a moment, then,

for tears of regret? Yet it was so. She turned, with an altered and

dejected countenance, to her young companions, who were come to bid her

farewell, and wept! Even my lady abbess, so stately and so solemn, she

saluted with a degree of sorrow, which, an hour before, she would

have believed it impossible to feel, and which may be accounted for by

considering how reluctantly we all part, even with unpleasing objects,

when the separation is consciously for ever. Again, she kissed the poor

nuns and then followed the Countess from that spot with tears, which she

expected to leave only with smiles.

But the presence of her father and the variety of objects, on the road,

soon engaged her attention, and dissipated the shade, which tender

regret had thrown upon her spirits. Inattentive to a conversation, which

was passing between the Countess and a Mademoiselle Bearn, her friend,

Blanche sat, lost in pleasing reverie, as she watched the clouds

floating silently along the blue expanse, now veiling the sun and

stretching their shadows along the distant scene, and then disclosing

all his brightness. The journey continued to give Blanche inexpressible

delight, for new scenes of nature were every instant opening to her

view, and her fancy became stored with gay and beautiful imagery.

It was on the evening of the seventh day, that the travellers came

within view of Chateau-le-Blanc, the romantic beauty of whose situation

strongly impressed the imagination of Blanche, who observed, with

sublime astonishment, the Pyrenean mountains, which had been seen only

at a distance during the day, now rising within a few leagues, with

their wild cliffs and immense precipices, which the evening clouds,

floating round them, now disclosed, and again veiled. The setting rays,

that tinged their snowy summits with a roseate hue, touched their lower

points with various colouring, while the blueish tint, that pervaded

their shadowy recesses, gave the strength of contrast to the splendour

of light.

The plains of Languedoc, blushing with the purple vine and

diversified with groves of mulberry, almond and olives, spread far to

the north and the east; to the south, appeared the Mediterranean, clear

as crystal, and blue as the heavens it reflected, bearing on its bosom

vessels, whose white sails caught the sun-beams, and gave animation

to the scene. On a high promontory, washed by the waters of the

Mediterranean, stood her father's mansion, almost secluded from the

eye by woods of intermingled pine, oak and chesnut, which crowned the

eminence, and sloped towards the plains, on one side; while, on the

other, they extended to a considerable distance along the sea-shores.