CHAPTER XV.
How our hero made his way to, and through France, he never afterwards could clearly call to mind.
Every perception was turned inward; while some mysterious spell seemed endued with the power of compelling his thoughts to go again and again the torturing round of remembrances, every one equally fraught with wretchedness. The miserable end of poor Willoughby—never could that heart-rending scene be erased from his memory—the devotion of his fond parent—such a thought might have soothed; but had he not been, and was he not still doomed to be, to her a source of unparalleled suffering. Then there was another being, whose idea he dreaded to approach—and she had once, for one short period, been all his dream of bliss.
There was certainly but little to draw him from his absorbing reflections in the dull and monotonous plains of Burgundy and French Compté. In due time, however, he left these behind him, and began to ascend the heights above Poligni; but he felt not the invigorating influence of the mountain air. He travelled on through the magnificent scenery of the great military road; yet scarcely saw its precipices, its waterfalls, its forests of beech and pine. At length the magnificent lake itself opened to his view; stretching from Geneva to Chillon, and reflecting, as in an immense mirror, the surrounding Alps with their fleecy region of eternal snows, their glacier cliffs, glittering in the sun-beams, their dark blue zone of wood, rock, precipice, and torrent; and their smiling fertile base. He completed the winding descent of the Jura, commanding the whole way to the very verge of the lake, a full view of the fairy scenery, the fertile slopes, the glowing vine-yards, the cornfields, orchards, gardens, towns, villages and villas; the wooded brows, tranquil vales, and sparkling streams, of the enchanting Pays de Vaud; yet he felt no pleasurable sensations arise: if the splendour of effect in some measure aroused him, it was rather to a state of more active suffering than before; as though the wilderness within were rendered more desolate by comparison with the paradise without.
He now proceeded by a beautiful drive along the water's edge to the gates of Geneva; and here found the usually vexatious delays, respecting passports, &c., peculiarly annoying, from the degrading consciousness of disguise.
When he succeeded in effecting his entrance, and had retired to rest, excessive fatigue, both of mind and body, brought sleep; but no sooner had his weary eyelids closed, than horrors assailed him.
The Rhone flowed with a rapid pace beneath the very street and house in which he had taken up his abode for the night. The pleasing murmur of its waters became to his dreaming fancy the tumult of the congregated multitude, around the foot of the scaffold, on which, with that extraordinary certitude which sometimes accompanies the visions of disordered slumber, he thought he was about to suffer an ignominious death.
The agony of the moment awoke him, and he slept no more. But he felt a stronger and more grateful sense than he had hitherto done, of the blessing of having been preserved from such a fate; and even hope, under the healing influence of a thankful spirit, in some sort revived. The foul blot might be yet removed; he might yet be restored to the love and respect of all good men; he might yet, though he could never more know happiness himself, cease to be a source of misery to the best of parents.
Fearful, that among the many English at Geneva, there might be some to whom he was personally known, he remained in the house the whole of the following day. In the evening, however, tempted by the balmy air, the weather being unusually fine for the season, he determined to go on the lake; a situation, in which he should of course be less liable than on shore to meeting other persons near enough for recognition.
He did so accordingly. The sun had, a short time since, sunk behind the Jura, while a lingering beam still crowned, as with a regal circlet, the stately brows of that monarch of the scene, Mont Blanc. The hour was calm and beautiful; the shores were fairy land; the lake a sea of gold; while its shining surface was dotted with numerous vessels of every description, gliding along so smoothly, that but for the changes which gradually became apparent in their relative positions, they might have seemed to have stood still.