Sometimes I was lost in the twilight of a thick
wood; sometimes, on emerging from a dark ravine, my eyes were charmed by
the sight of an open meadow...Nature seemed to revel in unwonted
contrasts; such varieties of aspect had she united in one spot. Here was
an eastern prospect bright with spring flowers, while autumn fruits
ripened to the south and the northern face of the scene was still locked
in wintry frosts...Add to this the different angles at which the peaks
took the light, the chiaroscuro of sun and shade, and the variations of
light resulting from it at morning and evening...sum up the impressions
I have tried to describe and you will be able to form an idea of the
enchanting situation in which I found myself...The scene has indeed a
magical, a supernatural quality, which so ravishes the spirit and senses
that one seems to lose all exact notion of one's surroundings and
identity."
This was a new language to eighteenth-century readers. Already it had
swept through the length and breadth of France, like a spring storm-wind
bursting open doors and windows, and filling close candle-lit rooms with
wet gusts and the scent of beaten blossoms; but south of the Alps the
new ideas travelled slowly, and the Piedmontese were as yet scarce aware
of the man who had written thus of their own mountains. It was true
that, some thirty years earlier, in one of the very monasteries on which
Odo now looked down, a Swiss vagrant called Rousseau had embraced the
true faith with the most moving signs of edification; but the rescue of
Helvetian heretics was a favourite occupation of the Turinese nobility
and it is doubtful if any recalled the name of the strange proselyte who
had hastened to signalise his conversion by robbing his employers and
slandering an innocent maid-servant.
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