After conversing for a few minutes with the abbess, the Countess rose to
go. This was the moment, which Blanche had anticipated with such eager
expectation, the summit from which she looked down upon the fairy-land
of happiness, and surveyed all its enchantment; was it a moment, then,
for tears of regret? Yet it was so. She turned, with an altered and
dejected countenance, to her young companions, who were come to bid her
farewell, and wept! Even my lady abbess, so stately and so solemn, she
saluted with a degree of sorrow, which, an hour before, she would
have believed it impossible to feel, and which may be accounted for by
considering how reluctantly we all part, even with unpleasing objects,
when the separation is consciously for ever. Again, she kissed the poor
nuns and then followed the Countess from that spot with tears, which she
expected to leave only with smiles.
But the presence of her father and the variety of objects, on the road,
soon engaged her attention, and dissipated the shade, which tender
regret had thrown upon her spirits. Inattentive to a conversation, which
was passing between the Countess and a Mademoiselle Bearn, her friend,
Blanche sat, lost in pleasing reverie, as she watched the clouds
floating silently along the blue expanse, now veiling the sun and
stretching their shadows along the distant scene, and then disclosing
all his brightness. The journey continued to give Blanche inexpressible
delight, for new scenes of nature were every instant opening to her
view, and her fancy became stored with gay and beautiful imagery.
It was on the evening of the seventh day, that the travellers came
within view of Chateau-le-Blanc, the romantic beauty of whose situation
strongly impressed the imagination of Blanche, who observed, with
sublime astonishment, the Pyrenean mountains, which had been seen only
at a distance during the day, now rising within a few leagues, with
their wild cliffs and immense precipices, which the evening clouds,
floating round them, now disclosed, and again veiled. The setting rays,
that tinged their snowy summits with a roseate hue, touched their lower
points with various colouring, while the blueish tint, that pervaded
their shadowy recesses, gave the strength of contrast to the splendour
of light.
The plains of Languedoc, blushing with the purple vine and
diversified with groves of mulberry, almond and olives, spread far to
the north and the east; to the south, appeared the Mediterranean, clear
as crystal, and blue as the heavens it reflected, bearing on its bosom
vessels, whose white sails caught the sun-beams, and gave animation
to the scene. On a high promontory, washed by the waters of the
Mediterranean, stood her father's mansion, almost secluded from the
eye by woods of intermingled pine, oak and chesnut, which crowned the
eminence, and sloped towards the plains, on one side; while, on the
other, they extended to a considerable distance along the sea-shores.