It was the finest season of the year and the loveliest weather imaginable. The party consulted therefore only pleasure on their way. Sometimes they went no more than a single stage in a day, and employed the rest in viewing any place in it's neighbourhood worth their curiosity. They often left their carriages to walk, to saunter, to dine on the grass on provisions they had brought with them; and whenever a beautiful view or uncommon scene presented themselves, they stopped to admire them; and Bellozane drew sketches, which were put into Emmeline's port feuille.
As they were travelling between Marseilles and Toulon they entered a road bounded on each side by mountainous rocks, which sometimes receding, left between them small but richly cultivated vallies; and in other parts so nearly met each other, as to leave little more room than sufficed for the carriage to pass; while the turnings of the road were so angular and abrupt, that it seemed every moment to be carrying them into the bosom of the rock. Thro' this defile, as it was quite shady, they agreed to walk.
In some places huge masses impended over them, of varied form and colour, without any vegetation but scattered mosses; in others, aromatic plants and low shrubs; the lavender, the thyme, the rosemary, the mountain sage, fringed the steep craggs, while a neighbouring aclivity was shaded with the taller growth of holly, phillyrea, and ever-green oak; and the next covered with the glowing purple of the Mediterranean heath. The summits of almost all, crowned with groves of fir, larch, and pine.
Emmeline in silent admiration beheld this beautiful and singular scene; and with the pleasure it gave her, a soft and melancholy sensation was mingled. She wanted to be alone in this delightful place, or with some one who could share, who could understand the satisfaction she felt. She knew nobody but Godolphin who had taste and enthusiasm enough to enjoy it.
Insensibly she left Lady Westhaven and the Chevalier behind her; and passing his Lordship and the Baron, who were deeply engaged in a discourse about the military operations of the past war, she walked on with some quickness. Intent on the romantic wildness of the cliffs with which she was surrounded, and her mind associating with these objects the idea of him on whom it now perpetually dwelt, she had brought Godolphin before her, and was imagining what he would have said had he been with her; with what warmth he would enjoy, with what taste and spirit point out, the beauty of scenes so enchanting!
She had now left her companions at some distance; yet as she heard their voices swell in the breeze along the defile, she felt no apprehension. In the narrowest part of it, where she saw only steep craggs and the sky, which their bending tops hardly admitted, she was stopped by a transparent stream, which bursting suddenly with some violence out of the rock, is received into a small reservoir of stone and then carried away in stone channels to a village at some distance.
While Emmeline stood contemplating this beautiful spring, she beheld, in an excavation in the rock close to it, two persons sitting on a bench, which had been rudely cut for the passenger to rest. One of them appeared to be a man about fifty; he wore a short, light coloured coat, a waistcoat that had once been of embroidered velvet; from his head, which was covered first with a red thrum nightcap, and then with a small hat, bound with tarnished lace, depended an immense queüe; his face, tho' thin and of a mahogena darkness, seemed to express penetration and good humour; and Emmeline, who had at first been a little startled, was no longer under alarm; when he, on perceiving her near the entrance of the cavern, flew nimbly out of it, bowed to the ground, and pulling off most politely his thrum nightcap, enquired—'Si Mademoiselle voudrez bien se reposer?'[4]
Emmeline thanked him, and advanced towards the bench; from which a girl about seventeen, very brown but very pretty, had on her approach arisen, and put up into a kind of wallet the remains of the provisions they had been eating, which were only fruit and black bread. As soon as the old Frenchman perceived that Emmeline intended to sit down, he sprung before her, brushed down the seat with his cap, and then making several profound bows, assured 'Mademoiselle qu'elle pourroit s'asseoir sans incommodité.'[3]
The young woman, dressed like the paisannes of the country, was modestly retiring; but Emmeline desired her to remain; and entering into conversation with her, found she was the daughter of the assiduous old Frenchman, and that he was going with her to Toulon in hopes of procuring her a service.
The Baron and Lord Westhaven now approached, and laughingly reproached Emmeline for having deserted them. She told them she was enchanted with the seat she had found, and should wait there for the Chevalier and Lady Westhaven.