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!