His native village, indeed, was an exception to the general character of the country, and to the usual effects of an arbitrary government; it was flourishing, healthy, and happy; and these advantages it chiefly owed to the activity and attention of the benevolent clergyman whose cure it was.
Adeline, who now began to feel the effects of long anxiety and fatigue, much wished to arrive at the end of her journey, and inquired impatiently of Peter concerning it. Her spirits thus weakened, the gloomy grandeur of the scenes which had so lately awakened emotions of delightful sublimity, now awed her into terror; she trembled at the sound of the torrents rolling among the cliffs and thundering in the vale below, and shrunk from the view of the precipices, which sometimes overhung the road and at others appeared beneath it. Fatigued as she was, she frequently dismounted to climb on foot the steep flinty road, which she feared to travel on horseback.
The day was closing when they drew near a small village at the foot of the Savoy Alps; and the sun, in all his evening splendour, now sinking behind their summits, threw a farewell gleam athwart the landscape so soft and glowing as drew from Adeline, languid as she was, an exclamation of rapture.
The romantic situation of the village next attracted her notice. It stood at the foot of several stupendous mountains, which formed a chain round a lake at some little distance, and the woods that swept from their summits almost embosomed the village. The lake, unruffled by the lightest air, reflected the vermeil tints of the horizon with the sublime on its borders, darkening every instant with the falling twilight.
When Peter perceived the village, he burst into a shout of joy. Thank God, said he, we are near home; there is my dear native place: it looks just as it did twenty years ago: and there are the same old trees growing round our cottage yonder, and the huge rock that rises above it. My poor father died there, Ma'mselle. Pray Heaven my sister be alive! it is a long while since I saw her. Adeline listened with a melancholy pleasure to these artless expressions of Peter, who in retracing the scenes of his former days seemed to live them over again. As they approached the village, he continued to point out various objects of his remembrance. And there too is the good pastor's chateau; look, Ma'mselle, that white house with the smoke curling, that stands on the edge of the lake yonder. I wonder whether he is alive yet: he was not old when I left the place, and as much beloved as ever man was; but death spares nobody!