E'en now your scenes enchanted meet my sight!
I see the earth unclose, the palace rise,
The high dome swell, and long arcades of light
Glitter among the deep embowering woods,
And glance reflecting from the trembling floods!
While to soft lutes the portals wide unfold,
And fairy forms, of fine ethereal dyes,
Advance with frolic step and laughing eyes,
Their hair with pearl, their garments deck'd with gold;
Pearls that in Neptune's briny waves they sought,
And gold from India's deepest caverns brought.
Thus your light visions to my eyes unveil,
Ye sportive pleasures, sweet illusion, hail!
But ah! at morn's first blush again ye fade!
So from youth's ardent gaze life's landscape gay,
And forms in fancy's summer hues array'd,
Dissolve at once in air at truth's resplendent day!
During several days succeeding that on which M. Amand had disclosed the cause of his melancholy, he did not visit La Luc. At length Adeline met him in one of her solitary rambles on the shore. He was pale, and dejected, and seemed much agitated when he observed her; she therefore endeavoured to avoid him, but he advanced with quickened steps and accosted her. He said it was his intention to leave Nice in a few days. I have found no benefit from the climate, added M. Amand; alas! what climate can relieve the sickness of the heart! I go to lose in the varieties of new scenes the remembrance of past happiness; yet the effort is vain; I am every where equally restless and unhappy. Adeline tried to encourage him to hope much from time and change of place. Time will blunt the sharpest edge of sorrow, said she; I know it from experience. Yet while she spoke, the tears in her eyes contradicted the assertions of her lips.—You have been unhappy, Adeline!—Yes—I knew it from the first. The smile of pity which you gave me, assured me that you knew what it was to suffer. The desponding air with which he spoke renewed her apprehension of a scene similar to the one she had lately witnessed, and she changed the subject; but he soon returned to it. You bid me hope much from time!—My wife!—My dear wife!——his tongue faltered—It is now many months since I lost her—yet the moment of her death seems but as yesterday. Adeline faintly smiled. You can scarcely judge of the effect of time, yet you have much to hope for. He shook his head. But I am again intruding my misfortunes on your notice; forgive this perpetual egotism. There is a comfort in the pity of the good, such as nothing else can impart; this must plead my excuse; may you, Adeline, never want it! Ah! those tears——Adeline hastily dried them. M. Amand forbore to press the subject, and immediately began to converse on indifferent topics. They returned towards the chateau; but La Luc being from home, M. Amand took leave at the door. Adeline retired to her chamber, oppressed by her own sorrows, and those of her amiable friend.
Near three weeks had now elapsed at Nice, during which the disorder of La Luc seemed rather to increase than abate, when his physician very honestly confessed the little hope he entertained from the climate, and advised him to try the effect of a sea voyage, adding that if the experiment failed, even the air of Montpellier appeared to him more likely to afford relief than that of Nice. La Luc received this disinterested advice with a mixture of gratitude and disappointment. The circumstances which had made him reluctant to quit Savoy, rendered him yet more so to protract his absence and increase his expenses; but the ties of affection that bound him to his family, and the love of life, which so seldom leaves us, again prevailed over inferior considerations; and he determined to coast the Mediterranean as far as Languedoc, where if the voyage did not answer his expectation he would land and proceed to Montpellier.
When M. Amand learned that La Luc designed to quit Nice in a few days, he determined not to leave it before him. During this interval he had not sufficient resolution to deny himself the frequent conversation of Adeline, though her presence, by reminding him of his lost wife, gave him more pain than comfort. He was the second son of a French gentleman of family, and had been married about a year to a lady to whom he had long been attached, when she died in her lying-in. The infant soon followed its mother, and left the disconsolate father abandoned to grief, which had preyed so heavily on his health, that his physician thought it necessary to send him to Nice. From the air of Nice, however, he had derived no benefit; and he now determined to travel further into Italy, though he no longer felt any interest in those charming scenes which in happier days and with her whom he never ceased to lament, would have afforded him the highest degree of mental luxury—now he sought only to escape from himself, or rather from the image of her who had once constituted his truest happiness.
La Luc having laid his plan, hired a small vessel, and in a few days embarked, with a sick hope, bidding adieu to the shores of Italy and the towering Alps, and seeking on a new element the health which had hitherto mocked his pursuit.
M. Amand took a melancholy leave of his new friends, whom he attended to the sea-side. When he assisted Adeline on board, his heart was too full to suffer him to say farewell; but he stood long on the beach pursuing with his eyes her course over the waters, and waving his hand, till tears dimmed his sight. The breeze wafted the vessel gently from the coast, and Adeline saw herself surrounded by the undulating waves of the ocean. The shore appeared to recede, its mountains to lessen, the gay colours of its landscape to melt into each other, and in a short time the figure of M. Amand was seen no more: the town of Nice, with its castle and harbour next faded away in distance, and the purple tint of the mountains was at length all that remained on the verge of the horizon. She sighed as she gazed, and her eyes filled with tears. So vanished my prospect of happiness, said she; and my future view is like the waste of waters that surround me. Her heart was full, and she retired from observation to a remote part of the deck, where she indulged her tears as she watched the vessel cut its way through the liquid glass. The water was so transparent that she saw the sun-beams playing at a considerable depth, and fish of various colours glance athwart the current. Innumerable marine plants spread their vigorous leaves on the rocks below, and the richness of their verdure formed a beautiful contrast to the glowing scarlet of the coral that branched beside them.
The distant coast at length entirely disappeared. Adeline gazed with an emotion the most sublime, on the boundless expanse of waters that spread on all sides: she seemed as if launched into a new world: the grandeur and immensity of the view astonished and overpowered her: for a moment she doubted the truth of the compass, and believed it to be almost impossible for the vessel to find its way over the pathless waters to any shore. And when she considered that a plank alone separated her from death, a sensation of unmixed terror superseded that of sublimity, and she hastily turned her eyes from the prospect, and her thoughts from the subject.
[CHAPTER XIX]
Is there a heart that music cannot melt?
Alas! how is that rugged heart forlorn!
Is there who ne'er the mystic transports felt
Of solitude and melancholy born?
He need not woo the Muse—he is her scorn.
BEATTIE.
Towards evening the captain, to avoid the danger of encountering a Barbary corsair steered for the French coast, and Adeline distinguished in the gleam of the setting sun the shores of Provence, feathered with wood and green with pasturage. La Luc, languid and ill, had retired to the cabin, whither Clara attended him. The pilot at the helm guiding the tall vessel through the sounding waters, and one solitary sailor leaning with crossed arms against the mast, and now and then singing parts of a mournful ditty, were all of the crew, except Adeline, that remained upon deck—and Adeline silently watched the declining sun, which threw a saffron glow upon the waves and on the sails gently swelling in the breeze that was now dying away. The sun at length sunk below the ocean, and twilight stole over the scene, leaving the shadowy shores yet visible, and touching with a solemn tint the waters that stretched wide around. She sketched the picture, but it was with a faint pencil.