ws of
any kind, did not comply with his wife's request, that they might survey
some of the palaces; but staying only till the necessary refreshments
could be obtained, they set forward for Venice with all possible
rapidity. Montoni's manner, during this journey, was grave, and even
haughty; and towards Madame Montoni he was more especially reserved; but
it was not the reserve of respect so much as of pride and discontent.
Of Emily he took little notice. With Cavigni his conversations were
commonly on political or military topics, such as the convulsed state
of their country rendered at this time particularly interesting, Emily
observed, that, at the mention of any daring exploit, Montoni's eyes
lost their sullenness, and seemed instantaneously to gleam with fire;
yet they still retained somewhat of a lurking cunning, and she sometimes
thought that their fire partook more of the glare of malice than the
brightness of valour, though the latter would well have harmonized with
the high chivalric air of his figure, in which Cavigni, with all his gay
and gallant manners, was his inferior.

On entering the Milanese, the gentlemen exchanged their French hats for
the Italian cap of scarlet cloth, embroidered; and Emily was somewhat
surprised to observe, that Montoni added to his the military plume,
while Cavigni retained only the feather: which was usually worn with
such caps: but she at length concluded, that Montoni assumed this ensign
of a soldier for convenience, as a means of passing with more safety
through a country over-run with parties of the military.

Over the beautiful plains of this country the devastations of war
were frequently visible. Where the lands had not been suffered to lie
uncultivated, they were often tracked with the steps of the spoiler;
the vines were torn down from the branches that had supported them, the
olives trampled upon the ground, and even the groves of mulberry trees
had been hewn by the enemy to light fires that destroyed the hamlets and
villages of their owners. Emily turned her eyes with a sigh from
these painful vestiges of contention, to the Alps of the Grison, that
overlooked them to the north, whose awful solitudes seemed to offer to
persecuted man a secure asylum.

The travellers frequently distinguished troops of soldiers moving at
a distance; and they experienced, at the little inns on the road, the
scarcity of provision and other inconveniences, which are a part of
the consequen