Free Valperga by Mary Shelley Page B

French
monarch. He was loaded with many costly presents; and his sword, of
the finest temper, the hilt and sheath richly embossed and inlaid
with jewels, was presented to him by the hands of the queen. He
consigned these gifts, and the spoil by which he was enriched, into
the hands of an Italian merchant, to be conveyed by his means into
Italy; he travelled himself on horseback, accompanied by a servant,
and a mule which bore his armour.
    Journeying at this leisurely rate, he arrived after an interval
of some weeks, at the southeastern extremity of France. He
approached the beautiful Alps, the boundaries of his native
country: their white domes and peaks pierced the serene atmosphere;
and silence, the deep silence of an Alpine winter, reigned among
their ravines. As he advanced into their solitudes, he lost all
traces of the footsteps of man, and almost of animals:--an eagle
would sometimes cross a ravine, or a chamois was seen hanging on
the nearly perpendicular rock. The giant pines were weighed down by
a huge canopy of snow; and the silent torrents and frozen
waterfalls were covered, and almost hid, by the uniform mass. The
paths of the vallies, and the ascent of the mountains, ever
difficult, were almost impassable; perpetual showers of snow hid
every track, and a few straggling poles alone guided the traveller
in his dangerous journey. The vulture leaving his nest in the rock,
screamed above, seeming to tell the rash adventurer who dared
disturb his haunt, that his torn limbs were the tribute due to him,
the monarch of that region. Sometimes even, the road was strewed
with the members of the venturous chamois, whose sure foot had
failed among the snows; and the approach of Castruccio scared the
birds of prey from their repast on his half-frozen limbs. One pass
was particularly dangerous: the road was cut in the side of a
precipitous mountain: below, the stream which had cleared its way
in the very depth of the valley, was hidden by the overhanging of
the precipice: above, the mountain side, almost vulture-baffling,
black, except where the snow had found a resting-place in its
clefts, towered so high that the head became dizzy, when the
traveller would have gazed on the walled-in heavens. The path was
narrow; and being entirely exposed to the south, the snows that
covered it had been slightly melted, and again frozen, so that they
had become slippery and dangerous. Castruccio dismounted from his
horse; and turning his eyes from the depth below, he led him slowly
on, until the widening of the road, and the appearance of a few
pines diminished the terror of the surrounding objects.
    Then, finding the road less dangerous, he remounted, and was
proceeding cautiously along the edge of the precipice, when he
heard a voice behind him as calling for help. Hastily dismounting,
and tying the animal to a jutting point of the rock, he returned to
that chasm, which he had just passed with such tremendous
difficulty. There he saw a mule standing quietly by the road side;
but, on the steep face of the precipice a few feet below, he
perceived a man clinging to the pointed inequalities of the
mountain, with such energy that his whole force and being seemed to
live in the grasp, and his voice failed as he again endeavoured to
cry for help. Castruccio's servant had lingered far behind, so
that he was obliged alone to attempt the fearful task of drawing
the sufferer from his appalling situation. He unbound his sash,
and, tying one end to the girth of the mule's saddle, and
taking the other in his hand, he threw it down to the man below. By
these means, with infinite difficulty, he succeeded in hoisting up
the poor wretch, who, white and wrinkled with fear, stood almost as
entranced, when he found himself safe from the frightful death he
had feared. Castruccio soothed him with a gentle voice, and told
him that now the worst part of the journey was over, and that they
were about to descend by an easier path to the plain of Italy;
"where," he