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.