The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe — Read

Light thickens, and the crow / Makes wing to the rooky wood: / Good things of day begin to droop, and drowse; / While night's black agents to their preys do rouse. / - Macbeth

Meanwhile Count De Villefort and Lady Blanche had passed a pleasant fortnight at the château de St. Foix, with the Baron and Baroness, during which they made frequent excursions among the mountains, and were delighted with the romantic wildness of Pyrenean scenery. It was with regret, that the Count bade adieu to his old friends, although with the hope of being soon united with them in one family; for it was settled that M. St. Foix, who now attended them into Gascony, should receive the hand of the Lady Blanche, upon their arrival at Château-le-Blanc. As the road, from the Baron's residence to La Vallée, was over some of the wildest tract of the Pyrenees, and where a carriage-wheel had never passed, the Count hired mules for himself and his family, as well as a couple of stout guides, who were well armed, informed of all the passes of the mountains, and who boasted, too, that they were acquainted with every brake and dingle in the way, could tell the names of all the highest points of this chain of Alps, knew every forest, that spread along their narrow valleys, the shallowest part of every torrent they must cross, and the exact distance of every goatherd's and hunter's cabin they should have occasion to pass -- which last article of learning required no very capacious memory, for even such simple inhabitants were but thinly scattered over these wilds.