Free The Heir of Mondolfo by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Page B

habitually curled in
contempt; his dark hair, clustering in thick curls round his
throat, completed the wild but grand and interesting appearance of
his person.
    It was winter, and the pleasures of the chase began. Every
morning the huntsmen assembled to attack the wild-boars or stags
which the dogs might arouse in the fastnesses of the Apennines.
    This was the only pleasure that Ludovico ever enjoyed. During
these pursuits he felt himself free. Mounted on a noble horse,
which he urged to its full speed, his blood danced in his veins,
and his eyes shone with rapture as he cast his eagle glance to
Heaven; with a smile of ineffable disdain, he passed his false
friends or open tormentors, and gained a solitary precedence in the
pursuit.
    The plain at the foot of Vesuvius and its neighboring hills was
stripped bare by winter; the full stream rushed impetuously from
the hills; and there was mingled with it the baying of the dogs and
the cries of the hunters; the sea, dark under a lowering sky, made
a melancholy dirge as its waves broke on the shore; Vesuvius
groaned heavily, and the birds answered it by wailing shrieks; a
heavy sirocco hung upon the atmosphere, rendering it damp and cold.
This wind seems at once to excite and depress the human mind: it
excites it to thought, but colors those thoughts, as it does the
sky, with black. Ludovico felt this; but he tried to surmount the
natural feelings with which the ungenial air filled him.
    The temperature of the air changed as the day advanced. The
clouded sky spent itself in snow, which fell in abundance; it then
became clear, and sharp frost succeeded. The aspect of earth was
changed. Snow covered the ground and lay on the leafless trees,
sparkling, white, and untrod.
    Early in the morning a stag had been roused, and, as he was
coursed along the plain skirting the hills, the hunters went at
speed. All day the chase endured. At length the stag, who from the
beginning had directed his course toward the hills, began to ascend
them, and, with various winclings and evolutions, almost put the
hounds to fault. Day was near its close when Ludovico alone
followed the stag, as it made for the edge of a kind of platform of
the mountain, which, isthmus- like, was connected with the hill by
a small tongue of land, and on three sides was precipitous to the
plain below. Ludovico balanced his spear, and his dogs drew in,
expecting that the despairing animal would there turn to bay. He
made one bound, which conducted him to the very brow of the
precipice--another, and he was seen no more. He sprang downward,
expecting more pity from the rocks beneath than from his human
adversary. Ludovico was fatigued by the chase and angry at the
escape of his prey. He sprang from his horse, tied him to a tree,
and sought a path by which he might safely descend to the plain.
Snow covered and hid the ground, obliterating the usual traces that
the flocks or herds might have left as they descended from their
pastures on the hills to the hamlets beneath; but Ludovico had
passed his boyhood among mountains: while his hunting-spear found
sure rest on the ground, he did not fear, or while a twig afforded
him sufficient support as he held it, he did not doubt to secure
his passage; but the descent was precipitous, and necessary caution
obliged him to be long. The sun approached the horizon, and the
glow of its departure was veiled by swift-rising clouds which the
wind blew upward from the sea--a cold wind, which whirled the snow
from its resting-place and shook it from the trees. Ludovico at
length arrived at the foot of the precipice. The snow reflected and
enhanced the twilight, and he saw four deep marks that must have
been made by the deer. The precipice was high above, and its escape
appeared a miracle. It must have escaped; but those were the only
marks it had left. Around lay a forest of ilex, beset by thick,
entangled underwood, and it seemed impossible that any animal so
large as the stag in pursuit could have