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.