The character of Matilda has been already so far revealed, as to render
it unnecessary to expatiate upon it farther. Suffice it to say, that
her syren illusions and well-timed blandishments, obtained so great a
power over the imagination of Verezzi, that his resolution to return
to Claudine’s cottage before sunset became every instant fainter and
fainter.
“And will you thus leave me?” exclaimed Matilda, in accents of the
bitterest anguish, as Verezzi prepared to depart. “Will you thus leave
unnoticed, her who, for your sake alone, casting aside the pride of
high birth, has wandered, unknown, through foreign climes? Oh! if I
have (led away by love for you) outstepped the bounds of modesty, let
me not, oh! let me not be injured by others with impunity. Stay, I
entreat thee. Verezzi, if yet one spark of compassion lingers in your
breast--stay, and defend me from those who vainly seek one who is
irrevocably thine.”
With words such as these did the wily Matilda work upon the generous
passions of Verezzi. Emotions of pity, of compassion, for one whose
only fault he supposed to be love for him, conquered Verezzi’s softened
soul.
“Oh! Matilda,” said he, “though I cannot love thee--though my soul is
irrevocably another’s--yet, believe me, I esteem, I admire thee; and it
grieves me that a heart, fraught with so many and so brilliant virtues,
has fixed itself on one who is incapable of appreciating its value.”
The time passed away, and each returning sun beheld Verezzi still
at Passau--still under Matilda’s roof. That softness, that melting
tenderness, which she knew so well how to assume, began to convince
Verezzi of the injustice of the involuntary hatred which had filled his
soul towards her. Her conversation was fraught with sense and elegant
ideas. She played to him in the cool of the evening; and often, after
sunset, they rambled together into the rich scenery and luxuriant
meadows which are washed by the Danube.
Claudine was not forgotten: indeed, Matilda first recollected her, and,
by placing her in an independent situation, added a new claim to the
gratitude of Verezzi.
In this manner three weeks passed away. Every day did Matilda practise
new arts, employ new blandishments, to detain under her roof the
fascinated Verezzi.
The most select parties in Passau, flitted in varied movements to
exquisite harmony, when Matilda perceived Verezzi’s spirits to be
ruffled by recollection.
When he seemed to prefer solitude, a moonlight walk by the Danube
was proposed by Matilda; or, with skilful fingers, she drew from her
harp sounds of the most heart-touching, most enchanting melody. Her
behaviour towards him was soft, tender, and quiet, and might rather
have characterised the mild, serene love of a friend or sister, than
the ardent, unquenchable fire which burnt, though concealed, within
Matilda’s bosom.
It was one calm evening that Matilda and Verezzi sat in a back saloon,
which overlooked the gliding Danube. Verezzi was listening, with all
the enthusiasm of silent rapture, to a favourite soft air which Matilda
sang, when a loud rap at the hall-door startled them. A domestic
entered, and told Matilda that a stranger, on particular business,
waited to speak with her.
“Oh!” exclaimed Matilda, “I cannot attend to him now; bid him wait.”
The stranger was impatient, and would not be denied.
“Desire him to come in, then,” said Matilda.
The domestic hastened to obey her commands.
Verezzi had arisen to leave the room. “No,” cried Matilda, “sit still;
I shall soon dismiss the fellow; besides, I have no secrets from you.”
Verezzi took his seat.
The wide folding-doors which led into the passage were open.
Verezzi observed Matilda, as she gazed fixedly through them, to grow
pale.
He could not see the cause, as he was seated on a sofa at the other end
of the saloon.
Suddenly she started from her seat; her whole frame seemed convulsed by
agitation, as she rushed through the door.
Verezzi heard an agitated voice exclaim, “Go! go!--to-morrow morning!”
Matilda returned. She seated herself again at the harp, which she had
quitted, and essayed to compose herself; but it was in vain, she was
too much agitated.
Her voice, as she again attempted to sing, refused to perform its
office; and her humid hands, as they swept the strings of the harp,
violently trembled.
“Matilda,” said Verezzi, in a sympathising tone, “what has agitated
you? Make me a repository of your sorrows; I would, if possible,
alleviate them.”
“Oh, no,” said Matilda, affecting unconcern, “nothing--nothing has
happened. I was even myself unconscious that I appeared agitated.”
Verezzi affected to believe her, and assumed a composure which he felt
not. The conversation changed, and Matilda assumed her wonted mien. The
lateness of the hour at last warned them to separate.
The more Verezzi thought upon the evening’s occurrence, the more did
a conviction in his mind, inexplicable even to himself, strengthen,
that Matilda’s agitation originated in something of consequence. He
knew her mind to be superior to common circumstance, and fortuitous
casualty, which might have ruffled an inferior soul. Besides, the
words which he had heard her utter--“Go! go!--to-morrow morning!”--and
though he resolved to disguise his real sentiments, and seem to let the
subject drop, he determined narrowly to scrutinise Matilda’s conduct,
and particularly to know what took place on the following morning. An
indefinable presentiment that something horrible was about to occur,
filled Verezzi’s mind. A long chain of retrospection ensued--he could
not forget the happy hours he had passed with Julia; her interesting
softness, her ethereal form, pressed on his aching sense.
Still did he feel his soul irresistibly softened towards Matilda--her
love for him flattered his vanity; and though he could not feel
reciprocal affection towards her, yet her kindness in rescuing him from
his former degraded situation, her altered manner towards him, and her
unremitting endeavours to please, to humour him in everything, called
for his warmest, his sincerest gratitude.
The morning came--Verezzi arose from a sleepless couch, and descending
into the breakfast-parlour, there found Matilda.
He endeavoured to appear the same as usual, but in vain; for an
expression of reserve and scrutiny was apparent on his features.
Matilda perceived it, and shrunk abashed from his keen gaze.
The meal passed away in silence.
“Excuse me for an hour or two,” at last stammered out Matilda--“my
steward has accounts to settle;” and she left the apartment.
Verezzi had now no doubt but that the stranger, who had caused
Matilda’s agitation the day before, was now returned to finish his
business.
He moved towards the door to follow her--he stopped.
“What right have I to pry into the secrets of another?” thought
Verezzi; “besides, the business which this stranger has with Matilda
cannot possibly concern me.”
Still was he compelled, by an irresistible fascination, as it were, to
unravel what appeared to him so mysterious an affair. He endeavoured to
believe it to be as she affirmed; he endeavoured to compose himself; he
took a book, but his eyes wandered insensibly.
Thrice he hesitated--thrice he shut the door of the apartment; till at
last, a curiosity, unaccountable even to himself, propelled him to seek
Matilda.
Mechanically he moved along the passage. He met one of the
domestics--he inquired where Matilda was.
“In the grand saloon,” was the reply.
With trembling steps he advanced towards it. The folding doors were
open. He saw Matilda and the stranger standing at the remote end of the
apartment.
The stranger’s figure, which was towering and majestic, was rendered
more peculiarly striking by the elegantly proportioned form of Matilda,
who leant on a marble table near her; and her gestures, as she
conversed with him, manifested the most eager impatience, the deepest
interest.
At so great a distance, Verezzi could not hear their conversation; but,
by the low murmurs which occasionally reached his ear, he perceived
that whatever it might be, they were both equally interested in the
subject.
For some time he contemplated them with mingled surprise and
curiosity--he tried to arrange the confused murmurs of their voices,
which floated along the immense and vaulted apartment; but no
articulate sound reached his ear.
At last Matilda took the stranger’s hand: she pressed it to her lips
with an eager and impassioned gesture, and led him to the opposite door
of the saloon.
Suddenly the stranger turned, but as quickly regained his former
position, as he retreated through the door; not quickly enough,
however, but, in the stranger’s fire-darting eye, Verezzi recognised
him who had declared eternal enmity at the cottage on the heath.
Scarcely knowing where he was, or what to believe, for a few moments
Verezzi stood bewildered, and unable to arrange the confusion of ideas
which floated in his brain and assailed his terror-struck imagination.
He knew not what to believe--what phantom it could be that, in the
shape of Zastrozzi, blasted his straining eye-balls--Could it really
be Zastrozzi? Could his most rancorous, his bitterest enemy, be thus
beloved, thus confided in, by the perfidious Matilda?
For several moments he stood doubting what he should resolve upon.
At one while he determined to reproach Matilda with treachery and
baseness, and overwhelm her in the mid career of wickedness; but at
last concluding it to be more politic to dissemble and subdue his
emotions, he went into the breakfast-parlour which he had left, and
seated himself as if nothing had happened, at a drawing which he had
left incomplete.
Besides, perhaps Matilda might not be guilty--perhaps she was
deceived; and though some scheme of villainy and destruction to
himself was preparing, she might be the dupe, and not the coadjutor,
of Zastrozzi. The idea that she was innocent soothed him; for he
was anxious to make up, in his own mind, for the injustice which he
had been guilty of towards her: and though he could not conquer the
disgusting ideas, the unaccountable detestations, which often, in spite
of himself, filled his soul towards her, he was willing to overcome
what he considered but as an illusion of the imagination, and to pay
that just tribute of esteem to her virtues which they demanded.
Whilst these ideas, although confused and unconnected, passed in
Verezzi’s brain, Matilda again entered the apartment.
Her countenance exhibited the strongest marks of agitation, and full of
inexpressible and confused meaning was her dark eye, as she addressed
some trifling question to Verezzi, in a hurried accent, and threw
herself into a chair beside him.
“Verezzi!” exclaimed Matilda, after a pause equally painful to
both--“Verezzi! I am deeply grieved to be the messenger of bad
news--willingly would I withhold the fatal truth from you; yet, by
some other means, it may meet your unprepared ear. I have something
dreadful, shocking, to relate; can you bear the recital?”
The nerveless fingers of Verezzi dropped the pencil--he seized
Matilda’s hand, and, in accents almost inarticulate from terror,
conjured her to explain her horrid surmises.
“Oh! my friend! my sister!” exclaimed Matilda, as well-feigned tears
coursed down her cheeks,--“oh! she is----”
“What! what!” interrupted Verezzi, as the idea of something having
befallen his adored Julia filled his maddened brain with tenfold
horror: for often had Matilda declared that since she could not become
his wife she would willingly be his friend, and had even called Julia
her sister.
“Oh!” exclaimed Matilda, hiding her face in her hands,
“Julia--Julia--whom you love, is dead.”
Unable to withhold his fleeting faculties from a sudden and chilly
horror which seized them, Verezzi sank forward, and, fainting, fell at
Matilda’s feet.
In vain, for some time, was every effort to recover him. Every
restorative which was administered, for a long time, was unavailing;
at last his lips unclosed--he seemed to take his breath easier--he
moved--he slowly opened his eyes.