Bernard, where frosts
prevailed at night, even in midsummer. Still the wind, though strong, was
balmy and soft, blowing athwart the heated plains of Lombardy, and
reaching the mountains charged with the moisture of the Adriatic and the
Mediterranean. As the young man turned in his walk, and faced this
breeze, it came over his spirit with a feeling of hope and home The
greater part of his life had been past in the sunny country whence it
blew, and there were moments when he was lulled into forgetfulness, by the
grateful recollections imparted by its fragrance. But when compelled to
turn northward again, and his eye fell on the misty hoary piles that
distinguished his native land, rude and ragged faces of rock, frozen
glaciers, and deep ravine-like valleys and glens, seemed to him to be
types of his own stormy, unprofitable, and fruitless life, and to foretell
a career which, though it might have touches of grandeur, was doomed to be
barren of all that is genial and consolatory.
All in and about the convent was still. The mountain had an imposing air
of deep solitude amid the wildest natural magnificence.
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