In recognizing even these poor necessaries to the repose he needed, Louis cast not a thought on the comforts he did not see, but thanking God for the good provided, stretched himself upon his hard bed, and soon was wrapped in balmy slumber.
After a night of profound sleep, the bright smile of the awakened sun played on his eye-lids, and starting from his pallet, with his usual morning-spring of joy he hailed the brilliancy of the opened day. In an apartment close to his chamber he found that luxury of the continent (which even this deserted mansion retained), a bath, and having enjoyed its refreshment, with spirits ready for whatever task might be assigned him, he prepared to meet again his mysterious visitor.
On re-entering the saloon, the gloominess which had appalled him the preceding evening was no longer there; it had disappeared before the chaser of shadows, and he advanced to a window to see what evidence of neighbourhood would present itself without.
A view, as novel as it was gay and picturesque, burst upon his sight. Under the windows stretched a high balustraded terrace, with broad stone-steps leading down to a garden intersected with parterres and long vistas foliaged with glittering icicles. The ground was white with snow, which had been falling all night, and nothing having tracked the deserted walks, it lay in shining smoothness as far as the low wall which bounded the garden. Beyond the parapet, trees of loftier growth stretched their ample arms over a plain that banked the mighty waters of the Danube, now arrested by the mightier hand of winter into a vast substantial causeway.
At this early hour in the morning, and on that long line of ice, whose limits were lost in the horizon, all Vienna and its surrounding country seemed assembled. Carriages of various forms and colours elevated on sledges, and filled by their owners of as various quality and habits, swept along in every direction. Men and women mounted on scates, darted past each other with the velocity of light; some with baskets of merchandize on their heads, and others, simply wrapped in their bear-skins, speeded forward on errands of business or of pleasure. Many of the sledged carriages took the direction of a beautiful island in the midst of the river. It was crowned with cedars, and every tree of perpetual green; they parted their verdant ranks to give place to a sloping glade, on whose smooth bosom stood a splendid but fantastic mansion. A thousand strains of music pierced the distant air, while the gay traineaux advanced in succession before its gilded colonades. Louis gazed and listened. How different was this unexpected, this glittering scene, from the sombre-suited winters of Northumberland! There, the black and sterile rocks frowned horrible over the frozen stream, which lay in death-like stillness under their gloomy shade. But yet that awful pause of nature was dear to his contemplative and happy mind. It filled him with recollections of the gracious voice, which had spoken the world into existence from the sterner solitude of chaos! And then, when his mood for loneliness changed, he had only to quit his meditations amongst these caverns of cold and silence, to emerge at once into the warm, social circle of endearing kindred, and animating friends!
While, with a fixed eye, he was thus musing on the present and the past, Gerard entered the room, and placed a tray with breakfast on the table. Louis enquired for Senor Castanos. The man answered, he was engaged. "With whom?"
"I do not know."
"Then I am not to expect him at breakfast?"
"He went out at sun-rise."
Louis asked no more questions, seeing that all around him were under the same law of la Trappe.