Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) (103 page)

The barge stopped before the portico of a large house, from whence a servant of Montoni crossed the terrace, and immediately the party disembarked. From the portico they passed a noble hall to a staircase of marble, which led to a saloon, fitted up in a style of magnificence that surprised Emily. The walls and ceilings were adorned with historical and allegorical paintings, in fresco; silver tripods, depending from chains of the same metal, illumined the apartment, the floor of which was covered with Indian mats painted in a variety of colours and devices; the couches and drapery of the lattices were of pale green silk, embroidered and fringed with green and gold. Balcony lattices opened upon the grand canal, whence rose a confusion of voices and of musical instruments, and the breeze that gave freshness to the apartment. Emily, considering the gloomy temper of Montoni, looked upon the splendid furniture of this house with surprise, and remembered the report of his being a man of broken fortune, with astonishment. ‘Ah!’ said she to herself, ‘if Valancourt could but see this mansion, what peace would it give him! He would then be convinced that the report was groundless.’

Madame Montoni seemed to assume the air of a princess; but Montoni was restless and discontented, and did not even observe the civility of bidding her welcome to her home.

Soon after his arrival, he ordered his gondola, and, with Cavigni, went out to mingle in the scenes of the evening. Madame then became serious and thoughtful. Emily, who was charmed with every thing she saw, endeavoured to enliven her; but reflection had not, with Madame Montoni, subdued caprice and ill-humour, and her answers discovered so much of both, that Emily gave up the attempt of diverting her, and withdrew to a lattice, to amuse herself with the scene without, so new and so enchanting.

The first object that attracted her notice was a group of dancers on the terrace below, led by a guitar and some other instruments. The girl, who struck the guitar, and another, who flourished a tambourine, passed on in a dancing step, and with a light grace and gaiety of heart, that would have subdued the goddess of spleen in her worst humour. After these came a group of fantastic figures, some dressed as gondolieri, others as minstrels, while others seemed to defy all description. They sung in parts, their voices accompanied by a few soft instruments. At a little distance from the portico they stopped, and Emily distinguished the verses of Ariosto. They sung of the wars of the Moors against Charlemagne, and then of the woes of Orlando: afterwards the measure changed, and the melancholy sweetness of Petrarch succeeded. The magic of his grief was assisted by all that Italian music and Italian expression, heightened by the enchantments of Venetian moonlight, could give.

Emily, as she listened, caught the pensive enthusiasm; her tears flowed silently, while her fancy bore her far away to France and to Valancourt. Each succeeding sonnet, more full of charming sadness than the last, seemed to bind the spell of melancholy: with extreme regret she saw the musicians move on, and her attention followed the strain till the last faint warble died in air. She then remained sunk in that pensive tranquillity which soft music leaves on the mind — a state like that produced by the view of a beautiful landscape by moonlight, or by the recollection of scenes marked with the tenderness of friends lost for ever, and with sorrows, which time has mellowed into mild regret. Such scenes are indeed, to the mind, like ‘those faint traces which the memory bears of music that is past’.

Other sounds soon awakened her attention: it was the solemn harmony of horns, that swelled from a distance; and, observing the gondolas arrange themselves along the margin of the terraces, she threw on her veil, and, stepping into the balcony, discerned, in the distant perspective of the canal, something like a procession, floating on the light surface of the water: as it approached, the horns and other instruments mingled sweetly, and soon after the fabled deities of the city seemed to have arisen from the ocean; for Neptune, with Venice personified as his queen, came on the undulating waves, surrounded by tritons and sea-nymphs. The fantastic splendour of this spectacle, together with the grandeur of the surrounding palaces, appeared like the vision of a poet suddenly embodied, and the fanciful images, which it awakened in Emily’s mind, lingered there long after the procession had passed away. She indulged herself in imagining what might be the manners and delights of a sea-nymph, till she almost wished to throw off the habit of mortality, and plunge into the green wave to participate them.

‘How delightful,’ said she, ‘to live amidst the coral bowers and crystal caverns of the ocean, with my sister nymphs, and listen to the sounding waters above, and to the soft shells of the tritons! and then, after sun-set, to skim on the surface of the waves round wild rocks and along sequestered shores, where, perhaps, some pensive wanderer comes to weep! Then would I soothe his sorrows with my sweet music, and offer him from a shell some of the delicious fruit that hangs round Neptune’s palace.’

She was recalled from her reverie to a mere mortal supper, and could not forbear smiling at the fancies she had been indulging, and at her conviction of the serious displeasure, which Madame Montoni would have expressed, could she have been made acquainted with them.

After supper, her aunt sat late, but Montoni did not return, and she at length retired to rest. If Emily had admired the magnificence of the saloon, she was not less surprised, on observing the half-furnished and forlorn appearance of the apartments she passed in the way to her chamber, whither she went through long suites of noble rooms, that seemed, from their desolate aspect, to have been unoccupied for many years. On the walls of some were the faded remains of tapestry; from others, painted in fresco, the damps had almost withdrawn both colours and design. At length she reached her own chamber, spacious, desolate, and lofty, like the rest, with high lattices that opened towards the Adriatic. It brought gloomy images to her mind, but the view of the Adriatic soon gave her others more airy, among which was that of the sea-nymph, whose delights she had before amused herself with picturing; and, anxious to escape from serious reflections, she now endeavoured to throw her fanciful ideas into a train, and concluded the hour with composing the following lines:

Down, down a thousand fathom deep,

Among the sounding seas I go;

Play round the foot of ev’ry steep

Whose cliffs above the ocean grow.

There, within their secret cares,

I hear the mighty rivers roar;

And guide their streams through Neptune’s waves

To bless the green earth’s inmost shore:

And bid the freshen’d waters glide,

For fern-crown’d nymphs of lake, or brook,

Through winding woods and pastures wide,

And many a wild, romantic nook.

For this the nymphs, at fall of eave,

Oft dance upon the flow’ry banks,

And sing my name, and garlands weave

To bear beneath the wave their thanks.

In coral bow’rs I love to lie,

And hear the surges roll above,

And through the waters view on high

The proud ships sail, and gay clouds move.

And oft at midnight’s stillest hour,

When summer seas the vessel lave,

I love to prove my charmful pow’r

While floating on the moonlight wave.

And when deep sleep the crew has bound,

And the sad lover musing leans

O’er the ship’s side, I breathe around

Such strains as speak no mortal means!

O’er the dim waves his searching eye

Sees but the vessel’s lengthen’d shade;

Above — the moon and azure sky;

Entranc’d he hears, and half afraid!

Sometimes, a single note I swell,

That, softly sweet, at distance dies;

Then wake the magic of my shell,

And choral voices round me rise!

The trembling youth, charm’d by my strain,

Calls up the crew, who, silent, bend

O’er the high deck, but list in vain;

My song is hush’d, my wonders end!

Within the mountain’s woody bay,

Where the tall bark at anchor rides,

At twilight hour, with tritons gay,

I dance upon the lapsing tides:

And with my sister-nymphs I sport,

Till the broad sun looks o’er the floods;

Then, swift we seek our crystal court,

Deep in the wave, ‘mid Neptune’s woods.

In cool arcades and glassy halls

We pass the sultry hours of noon,

Beyond wherever sunbeam falls,

Weaving sea-flowers in gay festoon.

The while we chant our ditties sweet

To some soft shell that warbles near;

Join’d by the murmuring currents, fleet,

That glide along our halls so clear.

There, the pale pearl and sapphire blue,

And ruby red, and em’rald green,

Dart from the domes a changing hue,

And sparry columns deck the scene.

When the dark storm scowls o’er the deep,

And long, long peals of thunder sound,

On some high cliff my watch I keep

O’er all the restless seas around:

Till on the ridgy wave afar

Comes the lone vessel, labouring slow,

Spreading the white foam in the air,

With sail and top-mast bending low.

Then, plunge I ‘mid the ocean’s roar,

My way by quiv’ring lightnings shewn,

To guide the bark to peaceful shore,

And hush the sailor’s fearful groan.

And if too late I reach its side

To save it from the ‘whelming surge,

I call my dolphins o’er the tide,

To bear the crew where isles emerge.

Their mournful spirits soon I cheer,

While round the desert coast I go,

With warbled songs they faintly hear,

Oft as the stormy gust sinks low.

My music leads to lofty groves,

That wild upon the sea-bank wave;

Where sweet fruits bloom, and fresh spring roves,

And closing boughs the tempest brave.

Then, from the air spirits obey

My potent voice they love so well,

And, on the clouds, paint visions gay,

While strains more sweet at distance swell.

And thus the lonely hours I cheat,

Soothing the shipwreck’d sailor’s heart,

Till from the waves the storms retreat,

And o’er the east the day-beams dart.

Neptune for this oft binds me fast

To rocks below, with coral chain,

Till all the tempest’s over-past,

And drowning seamen cry in vain.

Whoe’er ye are that love my lay,

Come, when red sun-set tints the wave,

To the still sands, where fairies play;

There, in cool seas, I love to lave.

CHAPTER III

He is a great observer, and he looks

Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,

he hears no music;

Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort,

As if he mock’d himself, and scorn’d his spirit

that could be mov’d to smile at any thing.

Such men as he be never at heart’s ease,

While they behold a greater than themselves.

Montoni and his companion did not return home, till many hours after the dawn had blushed upon the Adriatic. The airy groups, which had danced all night along the colonnade of St. Mark, dispersed before the morning, like so many spirits. Montoni had been otherwise engaged; his soul was little susceptible of light pleasures. He delighted in the energies of the passions; the difficulties and tempests of life, which wreck the happiness of others, roused and strengthened all the powers of his mind, and afforded him the highest enjoyments, of which his nature was capable. Without some object of strong interest, life was to him little more than a sleep; and, when pursuits of real interest failed, he substituted artificial ones, till habit changed their nature, and they ceased to be unreal. Of this kind was the habit of gaming, which he had adopted, first, for the purpose of relieving him from the languor of inaction, but had since pursued with the ardour of passion. In this occupation he had passed the night with Cavigni and a party of young men, who had more money than rank, and more vice than either. Montoni despised the greater part of these for the inferiority of their talents, rather than for their vicious inclinations, and associated with them only to make them the instruments of his purposes. Among these, however, were some of superior abilities, and a few whom Montoni admitted to his intimacy, but even towards these he still preserved a decisive and haughty air, which, while it imposed submission on weak and timid minds, roused the fierce hatred of strong ones. He had, of course, many and bitter enemies; but the rancour of their hatred proved the degree of his power; and, as power was his chief aim, he gloried more in such hatred, than it was possible he could in being esteemed. A feeling so tempered as that of esteem, he despised, and would have despised himself also had he thought himself capable of being flattered by it.

Among the few whom he distinguished, were the Signors Bertolini, Orsino, and Verezzi. The first was a man of gay temper, strong passions, dissipated, and of unbounded extravagance, but generous, brave, and unsuspicious. Orsino was reserved, and haughty; loving power more than ostentation; of a cruel and suspicious temper; quick to feel an injury, and relentless in avenging it; cunning and unsearchable in contrivance, patient and indefatigable in the execution of his schemes. He had a perfect command of feature and of his passions, of which he had scarcely any, but pride, revenge and avarice; and, in the gratification of these, few considerations had power to restrain him, few obstacles to withstand the depth of his stratagems. This man was the chief favourite of Montoni. Verezzi was a man of some talent, of fiery imagination, and the slave of alternate passions. He was gay, voluptuous, and daring; yet had neither perseverance or true courage, and was meanly selfish in all his aims. Quick to form schemes, and sanguine in his hope of success, he was the first to undertake, and to abandon, not only his own plans, but those adopted from other persons. Proud and impetuous, he revolted against all subordination; yet those who were acquainted with his character, and watched the turn of his passions, could lead him like a child.

Such were the friends whom Montoni introduced to his family and his table, on the day after his arrival at Venice. There were also of the party a Venetian nobleman, Count Morano, and a Signora Livona, whom Montoni had introduced to his wife, as a lady of distinguished merit, and who, having called in the morning to welcome her to Venice, had been requested to be of the dinner party.

Madame Montoni received with a very ill grace, the compliments of the Signors. She disliked them, because they were the friends of her husband; hated them, because she believed they had contributed to detain him abroad till so late an hour of the preceding morning; and envied them, since, conscious of her own want of influence, she was convinced, that he preferred their society to her own. The rank of Count Morano procured him that distinction which she refused to the rest of the company. The haughty sullenness of her countenance and manner, and the ostentatious extravagance of her dress, for she had not yet adopted the Venetian habit, were strikingly contrasted by the beauty, modesty, sweetness and simplicity of Emily, who observed, with more attention than pleasure, the party around her. The beauty and fascinating manners of Signora Livona, however, won her involuntary regard; while the sweetness of her accents and her air of gentle kindness awakened with Emily those pleasing affections, which so long had slumbered.

In the cool of the evening the party embarked in Montoni’s gondola, and rowed out upon the sea. The red glow of sun-set still touched the waves, and lingered in the west, where the melancholy gleam seemed slowly expiring, while the dark blue of the upper aether began to twinkle with stars. Emily sat, given up to pensive and sweet emotions. The smoothness of the water, over which she glided, its reflected images — a new heaven and trembling stars below the waves, with shadowy outlines of towers and porticos, conspired with the stillness of the hour, interrupted only by the passing wave, or the notes of distant music, to raise those emotions to enthusiasm. As she listened to the measured sound of the oars, and to the remote warblings that came in the breeze, her softened mind returned to the memory of St. Aubert and to Valancourt, and tears stole to her eyes. The rays of the moon, strengthening as the shadows deepened, soon after threw a silvery gleam upon her countenance, which was partly shaded by a thin black veil, and touched it with inimitable softness. Hers was the CONTOUR of a Madona, with the sensibility of a Magdalen; and the pensive uplifted eye, with the tear that glittered on her cheek, confirmed the expression of the character.

The last strain of distant music now died in air, for the gondola was far upon the waves, and the party determined to have music of their own. The Count Morano, who sat next to Emily, and who had been observing her for some time in silence, snatched up a lute, and struck the chords with the finger of harmony herself, while his voice, a fine tenor, accompanied them in a rondeau full of tender sadness. To him, indeed, might have been applied that beautiful exhortation of an English poet, had it then existed:

Strike up, my master,

But touch the strings with a religious softness!

Teach sounds to languish through the night’s dull ear

Till Melancholy starts from off her couch,

And Carelessness grows concert to attention!

With such powers of expression the Count sung the following