CHAPTER XVII
But in these cases, We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor: thus even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips. MACBETH
Some circumstances of an extraordinary nature now withdrew Emily fromher own sorrows, and excited emotions, which partook of both surpriseand horror.
A few days followed that, on which Signora Laurentini died, her willwas opened at the monastery, in the presence of the superiors and Mons.Bonnac, when it was found, that one third of her personal property wasbequeathed to the nearest surviving relative of the late Marchioness deVilleroi, and that Emily was the person.
With the secret of Emily's family the abbess had long been acquainted,and it was in observance of the earnest request of St. Aubert, whowas known to the friar, that attended him on his death-bed, thathis daughter had remained in ignorance of her relationship to theMarchioness. But some hints, which had fallen from Signora Laurentini,during her last interview with Emily, and a confession of a veryextraordinary nature, given in her dying hours, had made the abbessthink it necessary to converse with her young friend, on the topic shehad not before ventured to introduce; and it was for this purpose, thatshe had requested to see her on the morning that followed her interviewwith the nun. Emily's indisposition had then prevented the intendedconversation; but now, after the will had been examined, she receiveda summons, which she immediately obeyed, and became informed ofcircumstances, that powerfully affected her. As the narrative of theabbess was, however, deficient in many particulars, of which the readermay wish to be informed, and the history of the nun is materiallyconnected with the fate of the Marchioness de Villeroi, we shall omitthe conversation, that passed in the parlour of the convent, and minglewith our relation a brief history of
LAURENTINI DI UDOLPHO,
Who was the only child of her parents, and heiress of the ancient houseof Udolpho, in the territory of Venice. It was the first misfortuneof her life, and that which led to all her succeeding misery, that thefriends, who ought to have restrained her strong passions, and mildlyinstructed her in the art of governing them, nurtured them by earlyindulgence. But they cherished their own failings in her; for theirconduct was not the result of rational kindness, and, when they eitherindulged, or opposed the passions of their child, they gratified theirown. Thus they indulged her with weakness, and reprehended her withviolence; her spirit was exasperated by their vehemence, instead ofbeing corrected by their wisdom; and their oppositions became contestfor victory, in which the due tenderness of the parents, and theaffectionate duties of the child, were equally forgotten; but, asreturning fondness disarmed the parents' resentment soonest, Laurentiniwas suffered to believe that she had conquered, and her passions becamestronger by every effort, that had been employed to subdue them.
The death of her father and mother in the same year left her to her owndiscretion, under the dangerous circumstances attendant on youthand beauty. She was fond of company, delighted with admiration, yetdisdainful of the opinion of the world, when it happened to contradicther inclinations; had a gay and brilliant wit, and was mistress ofall the arts of fascination. Her conduct was such as might have beenexpected, from the weakness of her principles and the strength of herpassions.
Among her numerous admirers was the late Marquis de Villeroi, who, onhis tour through Italy, saw Laurentini at Venice, where she usuallyresided, and became her passionate adorer. Equally captivated by thefigure and accomplishments of the Marquis, who was at that period one ofthe most distinguished noblemen of the French court, she had the art soeffectually to conceal from him the dangerous traits of her characterand the blemishes of her late conduct, that he solicited her hand inmarriage.
Before the nuptials were concluded, she retired to the castle ofUdolpho, whither the Marquis followed, and, where her conduct, relaxingfrom the propriety, which she had lately assumed, discovered to himthe precipice, on which he stood. A minuter enquiry than he had beforethought it necessary to make, convinced him, that he had been deceivedin her character, and she, whom he had designed for his wife, afterwardsbecame his mistress.
Having passed some weeks at Udolpho, he was called abruptly to France,whither he returned with extreme reluctance, for his heart was stillfascinated by the arts of Laurentini, with whom, however, he had onvarious pretences delayed his marriage; but, to reconcile her to thisseparation, he now gave repeated promises of returning to concludethe nuptials, as soon as the affair, which thus suddenly called him toFrance, should permit.
Soothed, in some degree, by these assurances, she suffered him todepart; and, soon after, her relative, Montoni, arriving at Udolpho,renewed the addresses, which she had before refused, and which she nowagain rejected. Meanwhile, her thoughts were constantly with the Marquisde Villeroi, for whom she suffered all the delirium of Italian love,cherished by the solitude, to which she confined herself; for shehad now lost all taste for the pleasures of society and the gaiety ofamusement. Her only indulgences were to sigh and weep over a miniatureof the Marquis; to visit the scenes, that had witnessed their happiness,to pour forth her heart to him in writing, and to count the weeks, thedays, which must intervene before the period that he had mentioned asprobable for his return. But this period passed without bringinghim; and week after week followed in heavy and almost intolerableexpectation. During this interval, Laurentini's fancy, occupiedincessantly by one idea, became disordered; and, her whole heart beingdevoted to one object, life became hateful to her, when she believedthat object lost.
Several months passed, during which she heard nothing from the Marquisde Villeroi, and her days were marked, at intervals, with the phrensyof passion and the sullenness of despair. She secluded herself from allvisitors, and, sometimes, remained in her apartment, for weekstogether, refusing to speak to every person, except her favourite femaleattendant, writing scraps of letters, reading, again and again, thoseshe had received from the Marquis, weeping over his picture, andspeaking to it, for many hours, upbraiding, reproaching and caressing italternately.
At length, a report reached her, that the Marquis had married in France,and, after suffering all the extremes of love, jealousy and indignation,she formed the desperate resolution of going secretly to that country,and, if the report proved true, of attempting a deep revenge. To herfavourite woman only she confided the plan of her journey, and sheengaged her to partake of it. Having collected her jewels, which,descending to her from many branches of her family, were of immensevalue, and all her cash, to a very large amount, they were packed ina trunk, which was privately conveyed to a neighbouring town, whitherLaurentini, with this only servant, followed, and thence proceededsecretly to Leghorn, where they embarked for France.
When, on her arrival in Languedoc, she found, that the Marquis deVilleroi had been married, for some months, her despair almost deprivedher of reason, and she alternately projected and abandoned the horribledesign of murdering the Marquis, his wife and herself. At length shecontrived to throw herself in his way, with an intention of reproachinghim, for his conduct, and of stabbing herself in his presence; but,when she again saw him, who so long had been the constant object ofher thoughts and affections, resentment yielded to love; her resolutionfailed; she trembled with the conflict of emotions, that assailed herheart, and fainted away.
The Marquis was not proof against her beauty and sensibility; all theenergy, with which he had first loved, returned, for his passion hadbeen resisted by prudence, rather than overcome by indifference; and,since the honour of his family would not permit him to marry her, he hadendeavoured to subdue his love, and had so far succeeded, as to selectthe then Marchioness for his wife, whom he loved at first with atempered and rational affection. But the mild virtues of that amiablelady did not recompense him for her indifference, which appeared,notwithstanding her efforts to conceal it; and he had, for some time,suspected that her affections were engaged by another person, whenLaurentini arriv
ed in Languedoc. This artful Italian soon perceived,that she had regained her influence over him, and, soothed by thediscovery, she determined to live, and to employ all her enchantments towin his consent to the diabolical deed, which she believed was necessaryto the security of her happiness. She conducted her scheme with deepdissimulation and patient perseverance, and, having completely estrangedthe affections of the Marquis from his wife, whose gentle goodness andunimpassioned manners had ceased to please, when contrasted with thecaptivations of the Italian, she proceeded to awaken in his mind thejealousy of pride, for it was no longer that of love, and even pointedout to him the person, to whom she affirmed the Marchioness hadsacrificed her honour; but Laurentini had first extorted from him asolemn promise to forbear avenging himself upon his rival. This wasan important part of her plan, for she knew, that, if his desire ofvengeance was restrained towards one party, it would burn more fiercelytowards the other, and he might then, perhaps, be prevailed on to assistin the horrible act, which would release him from the only barrier, thatwith-held him from making her his wife.
The innocent Marchioness, meanwhile, observed, with extreme grief, thealteration in her husband's manners. He became reserved and thoughtfulin her presence; his conduct was austere, and sometimes even rude; andhe left her, for many hours together, to weep for his unkindness, and toform plans for the recovery of his affection. His conduct afflicted herthe more, because, in obedience to the command of her father, she hadaccepted his hand, though her affections were engaged to another, whoseamiable disposition, she had reason to believe, would have ensured herhappiness. This circumstance Laurentini had discovered, soon after herarrival in France, and had made ample use of it in assisting her designsupon the Marquis, to whom she adduced such seeming proof of his wife'sinfidelity, that, in the frantic rage of wounded honour, he consented todestroy his wife. A slow poison was administered, and she fell a victimto the jealousy and subtlety of Laurentini and to the guilty weakness ofher husband.
But the moment of Laurentini's triumph, the moment, to which she hadlooked forward for the completion of all her wishes, proved only thecommencement of a suffering, that never left her to her dying hour.
The passion of revenge, which had in part stimulated her to thecommission of this atrocious deed, died, even at the moment when it wasgratified, and left her to the horrors of unavailing pity and remorse,which would probably have empoisoned all the years she had promisedherself with the Marquis de Villeroi, had her expectations of analliance with him been realized. But he, too, had found the moment ofhis revenge to be that of remorse, as to himself, and detestation, asto the partner of his crime; the feeling, which he had mistaken forconviction, was no more; and he stood astonished, and aghast, that noproof remained of his wife's infidelity, now that she had suffered thepunishment of guilt. Even when he was informed, that she was dying, hehad felt suddenly and unaccountably reassured of her innocence, nor wasthe solemn assurance she made him in her last hour, capable of affordinghim a stronger conviction of her blameless conduct.
In the first horrors of remorse and despair, he felt inclined to deliverup himself and the woman, who had plunged him into this abyss of guilt,into the hands of justice; but, when the paroxysm of his sufferingwas over, his intention changed. Laurentini, however, he saw only onceafterwards, and that was, to curse her as the instigator of his crime,and to say, that he spared her life only on condition, that shepassed the rest of her days in prayer and penance. Overwhelmed withdisappointment, on receiving contempt and abhorrence from the man,for whose sake she had not scrupled to stain her conscience withhuman blood, and, touched with horror of the unavailing crime she hadcommitted, she renounced the world, and retired to the monastery of St.Claire, a dreadful victim to unresisted passion.
The Marquis, immediately after the death of his wife, quittedChateau-le-Blanc, to which he never returned, and endeavoured to losethe sense of his crime amidst the tumult of war, or the dissipationsof a capital; but his efforts were vain; a deep dejection hung over himever after, for which his most intimate friend could not account, andhe, at length, died, with a degree of horror nearly equal to that, whichLaurentini had suffered. The physician, who had observed the singularappearance of the unfortunate Marchioness, after death, had been bribedto silence; and, as the surmises of a few of the servants had proceededno further than a whisper, the affair had never been investigated.Whether this whisper ever reached the father of the Marchioness, and,if it did, whether the difficulty of obtaining proof deterred him fromprosecuting the Marquis de Villeroi, is uncertain; but her death wasdeeply lamented by some part of her family, and particularly by herbrother, M. St. Aubert; for that was the degree of relationship, whichhad existed between Emily's father and the Marchioness; and there is nodoubt, that he suspected the manner of her death. Many letters passedbetween the Marquis and him, soon after the decease of his belovedsister, the subject of which was not known, but there is reason tobelieve, that they related to the cause of her death; and these were thepapers, together with some letters of the Marchioness, who had confidedto her brother the occasion of her unhappiness, which St. Aubert had sosolemnly enjoined his daughter to destroy: and anxiety for her peace hadprobably made him forbid her to enquire into the melancholy story,to which they alluded. Such, indeed, had been his affliction, on thepremature death of this his favourite sister, whose unhappy marriage hadfrom the first excited his tenderest pity, that he never could hearher named, or mention her himself after her death, except to Madame St.Aubert. From Emily, whose sensibility he feared to awaken, he had socarefully concealed her history and name, that she was ignorant, tillnow, that she ever had such a relative as the Marchioness de Villeroi;and from this motive he had enjoined silence to his only survivingsister, Madame Cheron, who had scrupulously observed his request.
It was over some of the last pathetic letters of the Marchioness, thatSt. Aubert was weeping, when he was observed by Emily, on the eve ofher departure from La Vallee, and it was her picture, which he had sotenderly caressed. Her disastrous death may account for the emotion hehad betrayed, on hearing her named by La Voisin, and for his request tobe interred near the monument of the Villerois, where her remains weredeposited, but not those of her husband, who was buried, where he died,in the north of France.
The confessor, who attended St. Aubert in his last moments, recollectedhim to be the brother of the late Marchioness, when St. Aubert, fromtenderness to Emily, had conjured him to conceal the circumstance, andto request that the abbess, to whose care he particularly recommendedher, would do the same; a request, which had been exactly observed.
Laurentini, on her arrival in France, had carefully concealed hername and family, and, the better to disguise her real history, had,on entering the convent, caused the story to be circulated, which hadimposed on sister Frances, and it is probable, that the abbess, who didnot preside in the convent, at the time of her noviciation, was alsoentirely ignorant of the truth. The deep remorse, that seized onthe mind of Laurentini, together with the sufferings of disappointedpassion, for she still loved the Marquis, again unsettled herintellects, and, after the first paroxysms of despair were passed, aheavy and silent melancholy had settled upon her spirits, which sufferedfew interruptions from fits of phrensy, till the time of her death.During many years, it had been her only amusement to walk in the woodsnear the monastery, in the solitary hours of night, and to play upona favourite instrument, to which she sometimes joined the delightfulmelody of her voice, in the most solemn and melancholy airs of hernative country, modulated by all the energetic feeling, that dwelt inher heart. The physician, who had attended her, recommended it to thesuperior to indulge her in this whim, as the only means of soothing herdistempered fancy; and she was suffered to walk in the lonely hours ofnight, attended by the servant, who had accompanied her from Italy; but,as the indulgence transgressed against the rules of the convent, it waskept as secret as possible; and thus the mysterious music of Laurentinihad combined with other circumstances, to produce a report, that no
tonly the chateau, but its neighbourhood, was haunted.
Soon after her entrance into this holy community, and before she hadshewn any symptoms of insanity there, she made a will, in which, afterbequeathing a considerable legacy to the convent, she divided theremainder of her personal property, which her jewels made very valuable,between the wife of Mons. Bonnac, who was an Italian lady and herrelation, and the nearest surviving relative of the late Marchionessde Villeroi. As Emily St. Aubert was not only the nearest, but the solerelative, this legacy descended to her, and thus explained to her thewhole mystery of her father's conduct.
The resemblance between Emily and her unfortunate aunt had frequentlybeen observed by Laurentini, and had occasioned the singular behaviour,which had formerly alarmed her; but it was in the nun's dying hour, whenher conscience gave her perpetually the idea of the Marchioness, thatshe became more sensible, than ever, of this likeness, and, in herphrensy, deemed it no resemblance of the person she had injured, but theoriginal herself. The bold assertion, that had followed, on the recoveryof her senses, that Emily was the daughter of the Marchioness deVilleroi, arose from a suspicion that she was so; for, knowing that herrival, when she married the Marquis, was attached to another lover, shehad scarcely scrupled to believe, that her honour had been sacrificed,like her own, to an unresisted passion.
Of a crime, however, to which Emily had suspected, from her phrensiedconfession of murder, that she had been instrumental in the castle ofUdolpho, Laurentini was innocent; and she had herself been deceived,concerning the spectacle, that formerly occasioned her so much terror,and had since compelled her, for a while, to attribute the horrors ofthe nun to a consciousness of a murder, committed in that castle.
It may be remembered, that, in a chamber of Udolpho, hung a blackveil, whose singular situation had excited Emily's curiosity, and whichafterwards disclosed an object, that had overwhelmed her with horror;for, on lifting it, there appeared, instead of the picture she hadexpected, within a recess of the wall, a human figure of ghastlypaleness, stretched at its length, and dressed in the habiliments ofthe grave. What added to the horror of the spectacle, was, that the faceappeared partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which were visible onthe features and hands. On such an object, it will be readily believed,that no person could endure to look twice. Emily, it may be recollected,had, after the first glance, let the veil drop, and her terror hadprevented her from ever after provoking a renewal of such suffering, asshe had then experienced. Had she dared to look again, her delusion andher fears would have vanished together, and she would have perceived,that the figure before her was not human, but formed of wax. The historyof it is somewhat extraordinary, though not without example in therecords of that fierce severity, which monkish superstition hassometimes inflicted on mankind. A member of the house of Udolpho, havingcommitted some offence against the prerogative of the church, had beencondemned to the penance of contemplating, during certain hours of theday, a waxen image, made to resemble a human body in the state, to whichit is reduced after death. This penance, serving as a memento of thecondition at which he must himself arrive, had been designed toreprove the pride of the Marquis of Udolpho, which had formerly somuch exasperated that of the Romish church; and he had not onlysuperstitiously observed this penance himself, which, he had believed,was to obtain a pardon for all his sins, but had made it a conditionin his will, that his descendants should preserve the image, on pain offorfeiting to the church a certain part of his domain, that theyalso might profit by the humiliating moral it conveyed. The figure,therefore, had been suffered to retain its station in the wall of thechamber, but his descendants excused themselves from observing thepenance, to which he had been enjoined.
This image was so horribly natural, that it is not surprising Emilyshould have mistaken it for the object it resembled, nor, since she hadheard such an extraordinary account, concerning the disappearing of thelate lady of the castle, and had such experience of the character ofMontoni, that she should have believed this to be the murdered body ofthe lady Laurentini, and that he had been the contriver of her death.
The situation, in which she had discovered it, occasioned her, at first,much surprise and perplexity; but the vigilance, with which the doorsof the chamber, where it was deposited, were afterwards secured, hadcompelled her to believe, that Montoni, not daring to confide the secretof her death to any person, had suffered her remains to decay in thisobscure chamber. The ceremony of the veil, however, and the circumstanceof the doors having been left open, even for a moment, had occasionedher much wonder and some doubts; but these were not sufficient toovercome her suspicion of Montoni; and it was the dread of his terriblevengeance, that had sealed her lips in silence, concerning what she hadseen in the west chamber.
Emily, in discovering the Marchioness de Villeroi to have been thesister of Mons. St. Aubert, was variously affected; but, amidst thesorrow, which she suffered for her untimely death, she was released froman anxious and painful conjecture, occasioned by the rash assertion ofSignora Laurentini, concerning her birth and the honour of her parents.Her faith in St. Aubert's principles would scarcely allow her to suspectthat he had acted dishonourably; and she felt such reluctance tobelieve herself the daughter of any other, than her, whom she had alwaysconsidered and loved as a mother, that she would hardly admit such acircumstance to be possible; yet the likeness, which it had frequentlybeen affirmed she bore to the late Marchioness, the former behaviourof Dorothee the old housekeeper, the assertion of Laurentini, and themysterious attachment, which St. Aubert had discovered, awakened doubts,as to his connection with the Marchioness, which her reason couldneither vanquish, or confirm. From these, however, she was now relieved,and all the circumstances of her father's conduct were fully explained:but her heart was oppressed by the melancholy catastrophe of heramiable relative, and by the awful lesson, which the history of thenun exhibited, the indulgence of whose passions had been the means ofleading her gradually to the commission of a crime, from the prophecyof which in her early years she would have recoiled in horror, andexclaimed--that it could not be!--a crime, which whole years ofrepentance and of the severest penance had not been able to obliteratefrom her conscience.