A Sleepless Night
After eating, the peasant’s wife Dorina shows Emily to a small bedchamber. Emily asks about Montoni’s intentions for her, but Dorina gives only reserved, vague answers, claiming ignorance of Montoni’s plans while acknowledging her husband was informed of Emily’s arrival. Unable to get any information about her destination, Emily dismisses Dorina and tries to sleep, but anxious thoughts of her past experiences and uncertain future, combined with the stress of her new situation, keep her awake.
CHAPITRE VII.
This chapter opens with an epigraph from Thomson evoking idyllic, restful natural landscapes, then follows Emily’s experiences after being relocated to a secluded Tuscan cottage. It details her awe at the surrounding scenic beauty, her interactions with the peasant household (particularly the gentle Maddelina), her composition of the poem The Pilgrim, her dawning suspicion that Marco was complicit in Signora Laurentini’s mysterious disappearance years prior, her quiet melancholy and longing for Valancourt and her French home, Maddelina’s secret late-night act of kindness bringing her food, Emily’s sketching and gradual emotional recovery, her evening walk to the sea with Maddelina and Bertrand, and closes with her encounter with a group of singing peasants on the shore.
Emily’s Morning Prospect
When Emily opens her cottage casement on her first morning at the new dwelling, she is surprised and delighted by the stunning surrounding landscape: the cottage is nearly embowered in woods of chestnut, cypress, larch and sycamore, with the autumnal Apennines rising in a majestic, forest-crowned amphitheatre to the north and east, vineyards, olive and citrus groves covering the lower slopes, fertile cultivated plains, and a winding stream that leads to a purple-hued bay of the sea on the western horizon.
The Embowered Cottage
The cottage itself is shaded from the sun’s harshest rays by the surrounding woods, open only to the soft evening light, and is entirely covered in vines, fig trees and oversized, highly fragrant jessamine, with ripening grape clusters hanging round Emily’s casement. The turf below is inlaid with wild flowers and perfumed herbs, and a grove of lemon and orange trees on the opposite stream bank does not block her view, but instead enhances the serene, bower-like charm of the scene that brings her quiet peace of mind.
Maddelina and the Peasant Family
Emily is summoned to breakfast by Maddelina, the 17-year-old peasant daughter, whose soft voice, modesty and good nature stand in sharp contrast to the cruel, cunning, duplicitous demeanor of her parents Ugo and Bertrand, and their wife Dorina. Ugo announces he is returning to Udolpho, leaving Bertrand at the cottage, a change that distresses Emily. Later, Maddelina tells Emily the cottage was purchased for her parents by Montoni many years prior as a reward for service Marco (a relative of the Udolpho steward Carlo) rendered to him.
The Pilgrim
Forbidden from leaving the cottage unaccompanied, Emily retreats to her room, where memories of the prior night’s terror and Bertrand’s revealed identity as an assassin inspire her to compose the poem The Pilgrim. The poem tells the story of a pious pilgrim traveling to the shrine of the Lady of Loretto, who is murdered by a robber hiding in a cliffside pass, and who prays for his killer as he dies.
Marco’s Mysterious Reward
Emily dines alone in her room with Maddelina attending her, and learns the cottage was granted to Marco by Montoni roughly 18 years prior as reward for a great service. Emily connects this timeline to the period when Signora Laurentini disappeared from Udolpho, and becomes deeply troubled by the suspicion that Marco’s service for Montoni was criminal, possibly related to Laurentini’s vanishing.
Suspicions of Laurentini’s Fate
Emily’s realization that the timing of Marco’s reward aligns with Signora Laurentini’s disappearance leads her to the terrifying hypothesis that Marco assisted in a criminal act against Laurentini, possibly murder. She is overcome by distress and dread until she is able to calm herself, resolving to push away thoughts of potential evils that may never come to pass.
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