The Mysteries of Udolpho

Provisions being spread upon a projection of the rock, the Count and his

family partook of a supper, which, in a scene less rude, would certainly

have been thought less excellent. When the repast was finished, St.

Foix, impatient for the moon, sauntered along the precipice, to a point,

that fronted the east; but all was yet wrapt in gloom, and the silence

of night was broken only by the murmuring of woods, that waved far

below, or by distant thunder, and, now and then, by the faint voices of

the party he had quitted. He viewed, with emotions of awful sublimity,

the long volumes of sulphureous clouds, that floated along the upper and

middle regions of the air, and the lightnings that flashed from them,

sometimes silently, and, at others, followed by sullen peals of thunder,

which the mountains feebly prolonged, while the whole horizon, and the

abyss, on which he stood, were discovered in the momentary light. Upon

the succeeding darkness, the fire, which had been kindled in the cave,

threw a partial gleam, illumining some points of the opposite rocks, and

the summits of pine-woods, that hung beetling on the cliffs below, while

their recesses seemed to frown in deeper shade.

St. Foix stopped to observe the picture, which the party in the cave

presented, where the elegant form of Blanche was finely contrasted by

the majestic figure of the Count, who was seated by her on a rude stone,

and each was rendered more impressive by the grotesque habits and strong

features of the guides and other attendants, who were in the back ground

of the piece. The effect of the light, too, was interesting; on the

surrounding figures it threw a strong, though pale gleam, and glittered

on their bright arms; while upon the foliage of a gigantic larch, that

impended its shade over the cliff above, appeared a red, dusky tint,

deepening almost imperceptibly into the blackness of night.

While St. Foix contemplated the scene, the moon, broad and yellow, rose

over the eastern summits, from among embattled clouds, and shewed dimly

the grandeur of the heavens, the mass of vapours, that rolled half way

down the precipice beneath, and the doubtful mountains.

What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime,

Like shipwreck'd mariner on desert coast,

And view th'enormous waste of vapour, tost

In billows length'ning to th'horizon round!

THE MINSTREL

From this romantic reverie he was awakened by the voices of the guides,

repeating his name, which was reverbed from cliff to cliff, till an

hundred tongues seemed to call him; when he soon quieted the fears of

the Count and the Lady Blanche, by returning to the cave. As the storm,

however, seemed approaching, they did not quit their place of shelter;

and the Count, seated between his daughter and St. Foix, endeavoured to

divert the fears of the former, and conversed on subjects, relating to

the natural history of the scene, among which they wandered. He spoke

of the mineral and fossile substances, found in the depths of these

mountains,--the veins of marble and granite, with which they abounded,

the strata of shells, discovered near their summits, many thousand

fathom above the level of the sea, and at a vast distance from its

present shore;--of the tremendous chasms and caverns of the rocks, the

grotesque form of the mountains, and the various phaenomena, that seem

to stamp upon the world the history of the deluge. From the natural

history he descended to the mention of events and circumstances,

connected with the civil story of the Pyrenees; named some of the most

remarkable fortresses, which France and Spain had erected in the passes

of these mountains; and gave a brief account of some celebrated sieges

and encounters in early times, when Ambition first frightened Solitude

from these her deep recesses, made her mountains, which before had

echoed only to the torrent's roar, tremble with the clang of arms, and,

when man's first footsteps in her sacred haunts had left the print of

blood!