“That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, ye murdering ministers,
Wherever, in your sightless substances,
Ye wait on nature’s mischief.”--Macbeth.
Verezzi raised the goblet which he had just filled, and exclaimed, in
an impassioned tone--
“My adored Matilda! this is to thy happiness--this is to thy every
wish; and if I cherish a single thought which centres not in thee,
may the most horrible tortures which ever poisoned the peace of man,
drive me instantly to distraction. God of heaven! witness thou my oath,
and write it in letters never to be erased! Ministering spirits, who
watch over the happiness of mortals, attend! for here I swear eternal
fidelity, indissoluble, unalterable affection to Matilda!”
He said--he raised his eyes towards heaven--he gazed upon Matilda.
Their eyes met--hers gleamed with a triumphant expression of unbounded
love.
Verezzi raised the goblet to his lips--when, lo! on a sudden, he
dashed it to the ground--his whole frame was shook by horrible
convulsions--his glaring eyes, starting from their sockets, rolled
wildly around: seized with sudden madness, he drew a dagger from his
girdle, and with fellest intent raised it high----
What phantom blasted Verezzi’s eyeball! what made the impassioned
lover dash a goblet to the ground, which he was about to drain as a
pledge of eternal love to the choice of his soul! and why did he,
infuriate, who had, but an instant before, imagined Matilda’s arms an
earthly paradise, attempt to rush unprepared into the presence of his
Creator!--It was the mildly-beaming eyes of the lovely but forgotten
Julia, which spoke reproaches to the soul of Verezzi--it was her
celestial countenance, shaded by dishevelled ringlets, which spoke
daggers to the false one; for, when he had raised the goblet to his
lips--when, sublimed by the maddening fire of voluptuousness to the
height of enthusiastic passion, he swore indissoluble fidelity to
another--Julia stood before him!
Madness--fiercest madness--revelled through his brain. He raised
the poniard high, but Julia rushed forwards, and, in accents of
distinction, in a voice of alarmed tenderness, besought him to spare
himself--to spare her--for all might yet be well.
“Oh! never, never!” exclaimed Verezzi, frantically; “no peace but in
the grave for me.----I am--I am--married to Matilda.”
Saying this, he fell backwards upon a sofa, in strong convulsions, yet
his hand still grasped the fatal poniard.
Matilda, meanwhile, fixedly contemplated the scene. Fiercest passions
raged through her breast--vengeance, disappointed love--disappointed in
the instant too when she had supposed happiness to be hers for ever,
rendered her bosom the scene of wildest anarchy.
Yet she spoke not--she moved not--but, collected in herself, stood
waiting the issue of that event, which had so unexpectedly dissolved
her visions of air-built ecstasy.
Serened to firmness from despair, Julia administered everything which
could restore Verezzi with the most unremitting attention. At last he
recovered. He slowly raised himself, and starting from the sofa where
he lay, his eyes rolling wildly, and his whole frame convulsed by
fiercest agitation, he raised the dagger which he still retained, and,
with a bitter smile of exultation, plunged it into his bosom! His soul
fled without a groan, and his body fell to the floor, bathed in purple
blood.
Maddened by this death-blow to all anticipation of happiness,
Matilda’s faculties, as she stood, whirled in wild confusion: she
scarce knew where she was.
At last, a portentous, a frightful calm, spread itself over her soul.
Revenge, direst revenge, swallowed up every other feeling. Her eyes
scintillated with a fiend-like expression. She advanced to the lifeless
corse of Verezzi--she plucked the dagger from his bosom--it was stained
with his life’s blood, which trickled fast from the point to the floor.
She raised it on high, and impiously called upon the God of nature to
doom her to endless torments, should Julia survive her vengeance.
She advanced towards her victim, who lay bereft of sense on the floor:
she shook her rudely, and grasping a handful of her dishevelled hair,
raised her from the earth.
“Knowest thou me?” exclaimed Matilda, in frantic passion--“knowest thou
the injured Laurentini? Behold this dagger, reeking with my husband’s
blood--behold that pale corse, in whose now cold breast thy accursed
image revelling, impelled to commit the deed which deprives me of
happiness for ever.”
Julia’s senses, roused by Matilda’s violence, returned. She cast her
eyes upwards, with a timid expression of apprehension, and beheld the
infuriate Matilda convulsed by fiercest passion, and a blood-stained
dagger raised aloft, threatening instant death.
“Die! detested wretch,” exclaimed Matilda, in a paroxysm of rage, as
she violently attempted to bathe the stiletto in the life-blood of her
rival; but Julia starting aside, the weapon slightly wounded her neck,
and the ensanguined stream stained her alabaster bosom.
She fell on the floor, but suddenly starting up, attempted to escape
her bloodthirsty persecutor.
Nerved anew by this futile attempt to escape her vengeance, the
ferocious Matilda seized Julia’s floating hair, and holding her back
with fiend-like strength, stabbed her in a thousand places; and, with
exulting pleasure, again and again buried the dagger to the hilt in her
body, even after all remains of life were annihilated.
At last the passions of Matilda, exhausted by their own violence,
sank into a deadly calm; she threw the dagger violently from her, and
contemplated the terrific scene before her with a sullen gaze.
Before her, in the arms of death, lay him on whom her hopes of
happiness seemed to have formed so firm a basis.
Before her lay her rival, pierced with innumerable wounds, whose head
reclined on Verezzi’s bosom, and whose angelic features, even in death,
a smile of affection pervaded.
There she herself stood, an isolated guilty being. A fiercer paroxysm
of passion now seized her: in an agony of horror, too great to be
described, she tore her hair in handfuls--she blasphemed the power who
had given her being, and imprecated eternal torments upon the mother
who had borne her.
“And is it for this,” added the ferocious Matilda--“is it for horror,
for torments such as these, that He, whom monks call all-merciful, has
created me?”
She seized the dagger which lay on the floor.
“Ah, friendly dagger,” she exclaimed, in a voice of fiend-like horror,
“would that thy blow produced annihilation! with what pleasure then
would I clasp thee to my heart!”
She raised it high--she gazed on it--the yet warm blood of the innocent
Julia trickled from its point.
The guilty Matilda shrunk at death--she let fall the upraised
dagger--her soul had caught a glimpse of the misery which awaits the
wicked hereafter, and, spite of her contempt of religion--spite of her,
till now, too firm dependence on the doctrines of atheism, she trembled
at futurity; and a voice from within, which whispers, “thou shalt
never die!” spoke daggers to Matilda’s soul.
Whilst thus she stood entranced in a delirium of despair, the night
wore away, and the domestic who attended her, surprised at the unusual
hour to which they had prolonged the banquet, came to announce the
lateness of the hour; but opening the door, and perceiving Matilda’s
garments stained with blood, she started back with affright, without
knowing the full extent of horror which the chamber contained, and
alarmed the other domestics with an account that Matilda had been
stabbed.
In a crowd they all came to the door, but started back in terror when
they saw Verezzi and Julia stretched lifeless on the floor.
Summoning fortitude from despair, Matilda loudly called for them to
return: but fear and horror overbalanced her commands, and, wild with
affright, they all rushed from the chamber, except Ferdinand, who
advanced to Matilda, and demanded an explanation.
Matilda gave it, in few and hurried words.
Ferdinand again quitted the apartment, and told the credulous
domestics, that an unknown female had surprised Verezzi and Matilda;
that she had stabbed Verezzi, and then committed suicide.
The crowd of servants, as in mute terror they listened to Ferdinand’s
account, entertained not a doubt of the truth. Again and again they
demanded an explanation of the mysterious affair, and employed their
wits in conjecturing what might be the cause of it; but the more
they conjectured, the more were they puzzled; till at last, a clever
fellow named Pietro, who, hating Ferdinand on account of the superior
confidence with which his lady treated him, and supposing more to be
concealed in this affair than met the ear, gave information to the
police, and, before morning, Matilda’s dwelling was surrounded by a
party of officials belonging to il Consiglio di dieci.
Loud shouts rent the air as the officials attempted the entrance.
Matilda still was in the apartment where, during the night, so bloody
a tragedy had been acted: still in speechless horror was she extended
on the sofa, when a loud rap at the door aroused the horror-tranced
wretch. She started from the sofa in wildest perturbation, and listened
attentively. Again was the noise repeated, and the officials rushed in.
They searched every apartment; at last they entered that in which
Matilda, motionless with despair, remained.
Even the stern officials, hardy, unfeeling as they were, started
back with momentary horror as they beheld the fair countenance of
the murdered Julia; fair even in death, and her body disfigured with
numberless ghastly wounds.
“This cannot be suicide,” muttered one, who by his superior manner,
seemed to be their chief, as he raised the fragile form of Julia
from the ground, and the blood, scarcely yet cold, trickled from her
vestments.
“Put your orders in execution,” added he.
Two officials advanced towards Matilda, who, standing apart with
seeming tranquillity, awaited their approach.
“What wish you with me?” exclaimed Matilda haughtily.
The officials answered not; but their chief, drawing a paper from his
vest, which contained an order for the arrest of Matilda La Contessa di
Laurentini, presented it to her.
She turned pale; but, without resistance, obeyed the mandate, and
followed the officials in silence to the canal, where a gondola waited,
and in a short time she was in the gloomy prisons of il Consiglio di
dieci.
A little straw was the bed of the haughty Laurentini; a pitcher of
water and bread was her sustenance; gloom, horror, and despair pervaded
her soul; all the pleasures which she had but yesterday tasted; all the
ecstatic blisses which her enthusiastic soul had painted for futurity,
like the unreal vision of a dream, faded away; and, confined in a damp
and narrow cell, Matilda saw that all her hopes of future delight would
end in speedy and ignominious dissolution.
Slow passed the time--slow did the clock at St. Mark’s toll the
revolving hours as languidly they passed away.
Night came on, and the hour of midnight struck upon Matilda’s soul as
her death knell.
A noise was heard in the passage which led to the prison.
Matilda raised her head from the wall against which it was reclined,
and eagerly listened, as if in expectation of an event which would seal
her future fate. She still gazed, when the chains of the entrance were
unlocked. The door, as it opened, grated harshly on its hinges, and two
officials entered.
“Follow me,” was the laconic injunction which greeted her terror-struck
ear.
Trembling, Matilda arose: her limbs, stiffened by confinement, almost
refused to support her; but collecting fortitude from desperation, she
followed the relentless officials in silence.
One of them bore a lamp, whose rays, darting in uncertain columns,
showed, by strong contrasts of light and shade, the extreme massiness
of the passages.
The Gothic frieze above was worked with art; and the corbels, in
various and grotesque forms, jutted from the tops of clustered
pilasters.
They stopped at a door. Voices were heard from within: their hollow
tones filled Matilda’s soul with unconquerable tremors. But she
summoned all her resolution--she resolved to be collected during
the trial; and even, if sentenced to death, to meet her fate with
fortitude, that the populace, as they gazed, might not exclaim--“The
poor Laurentini dared not to die.”
These thoughts were passing in her mind during the delay which was
occasioned by the officials conversing with another whom they met there.
At last they ceased--an uninterrupted silence reigned: the immense
folding doors were thrown open, and disclosed to Matilda’s view a vast
and lofty apartment. In the centre was a table, which a lamp, suspended
from the centre, overhung, and where two stern-looking men, habited in
black vestments, were seated.
Scattered papers covered the table, with which the two men in black
seemed busily employed.
Two officials conducted Matilda to the table where they sat, and,
retiring, left her there.