Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 1).djvu/110

 fowl, whose melancholy cries heightened the natural solemnity of the evening hour. Behind the chateau lay its old fashioned gardens, full of fountains, labyrinths, bowers, and mutilated statues; and above them, bounding the horizon, were seen the towering Alps, those gigantic sons of creation, to whom compared, the proudest monuments of art are as insignificant as the ray of the glow-worm to the solar blaze. The gardens were terminated by a narrow valley, to which there was a descent by steps cut in the sod: it lay between stupendous mountains, whose summits, at a distance, appeared tinged with blue vapour, and proudly reaching to the clouds; and in it stood the remains of a religious house, built and endowed by an ancestor of the Countess, many years prior to the erection of the castle, and at which this period had been long uninhabited in consequence of its decay; it still however continued to be the Countess's place of worship; hither, whenever she resided at the chateau, she was wont to retire at the close of day,