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 from
her own sorrows, and excited emotions, which partook of both surprise
and horror.
A few days followed that, on which Signora Laurentini died, her will
was opened at the monastery, in the presence of the superiors and Mons.
Bonnac, when it was found, that one third of her personal property was
bequeathed to the nearest surviving relative of the late Marchioness de
Villeroi, 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, who was
known to the friar, that attended him on his death-bed, that his
daughter had remained in ignorance of her relationship to the
Marchioness. But some hints, which had fallen from Signora Laurentini,
during her last interview with Emily, and a confession of a very
extraordinary nature, given in her dying hours, had made the abbess
think it necessary to converse with her young friend, on the topic she
had not before ventured to introduce; and it was for this purpose, that
she had requested to see her on the morning that followed her interview
with the nun. Emily’s indisposition had then prevented the intended
conversation; but now, after the will had been examined, she received a
summons, which she immediately obeyed, and became informed of
circumstances, that powerfully affected her. As the narrative of the
abbess was, however, deficient in many particulars, of which the reader
may wish to be informed, and the history of the nun is materially
connected with the fate of the Marchioness de Villeroi, we shall omit
the conversation, that passed in the parlour of the convent, and mingle
with our relation a brief history of
LAURENTINI DI UDOLPHO,
who was the only child of her parents, and heiress of the ancient house
of Udolpho, in the territory of Venice. It was the first misfortune of
her life, and that which led to all her succeeding misery, that the
friends, who ought to have restrained her strong passions, and mildly
instructed her in the art of governing them, nurtured them by early
indulgence. But they cherished their own failings in her; for their
conduct was not the result of rational kindness, and, when they either
indulged, or opposed the passions of their child, they gratified their
own. Thus they indulged her with weakness, and reprehended her with
violence; her spirit was exasperated by their vehemence, instead of
being corrected by their wisdom; and their oppositions became contest
for victory, in which the due tenderness of the parents, and the
affectionate duties of the child, were equally forgotten; but, as
returning fondness disarmed the parents’ resentment soonest, Laurentini
was suffered to believe that she had conquered, and her passions became
stronger 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 own
discretion, under the dangerous circumstances attendant on youth and
beauty. She was fond of company, delighted with admiration, yet
disdainful of the opinion of the world, when it happened to contradict
her inclinations; had a gay and brilliant wit, and was mistress of all
the arts of fascination. Her conduct was such as might have been
expected, from the weakness of her principles and the strength of her
passions.
Among her numerous admirers was the late Marquis de Villeroi, who, on
his tour through Italy, saw Laurentini at Venice, where she usually
resided, and became her passionate adorer. Equally captivated by the
figure and accomplishments of the Marquis, who was at that period one
of the most distinguished noblemen of the French court, she had the art
so effectually to conceal from him the dangerous traits of her
character and the blemishes of her late conduct, that he solicited her
hand in marriage.
Before the nuptials were concluded, she retired to the castle of
Udolpho, whither the Marquis followed, and, where her conduct, relaxing
from the propriety, which she had lately assumed, discovered to him the
precipice, on which he stood. A minuter enquiry than he had before
thought it necessary to make, convinced him, that he had been deceived
in her character, and she, whom he had designed for his wife,
afterwards became his mistress.
Having passed some weeks at Udolpho, he was called abruptly to France,
whither he returned with extreme reluctance, for his heart was still
fascinated by the arts of Laurentini, with whom, however, he had on
various pretences delayed his marriage; but, to reconcile her to this
separation, he now gave repeated promises of returning to conclude the
nuptials, as soon as the affair, which thus suddenly called him to
France, should permit.
Soothed, in some degree, by these assurances, she suffered him to
depart; and, soon after, her relative, Montoni, arriving at Udolpho,
renewed the addresses, which she had before refused, and which she now
again rejected. Meanwhile, her thoughts were constantly with the
Marquis de Villeroi, for whom she suffered all the delirium of Italian
love, cherished by the solitude, to which she confined herself; for she
had now lost all taste for the pleasures of society and the gaiety of
amusement. Her only indulgences were to sigh and weep over a miniature
of 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, the days, which must intervene before the period that he had
mentioned as probable for his return. But this period passed without
bringing him; and week after week followed in heavy and almost
intolerable expectation. During this interval, Laurentini’s fancy,
occupied incessantly by one idea, became disordered; and, her whole
heart being devoted to one object, life became hateful to her, when she
believed that object lost.
Several months passed, during which she heard nothing from the Marquis
de Villeroi, and her days were marked, at intervals, with the frenzy of
passion and the sullenness of despair. She secluded herself from all
visitors, and, sometimes, remained in her apartment, for weeks
together, refusing to speak to every person, except her favourite
female attendant, writing scraps of letters, reading, again and again,
those she had received from the Marquis, weeping over his picture, and
speaking to it, for many hours, upbraiding, reproaching and caressing
it alternately.
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 her favourite woman only she confided the plan of her
journey, and she engaged her to partake of it. Having collected her
jewels, which, descending to her from many branches of her family, were
of immense value, and all her cash, to a very large amount, they were
packed in a trunk, which was privately conveyed to a neighbouring town,
whither Laurentini, with this only servant, followed, and thence
proceeded secretly to Leghorn, where they embarked for France.
When, on her arrival in Languedoc, she found, that the Marquis de
Villeroi had been married, for some months, her despair almost deprived
her of reason, and she alternately projected and abandoned the horrible
design of murdering the Marquis, his wife and herself. At length she
contrived to throw herself in his way, with an intention of reproaching
him, for his conduct, and of stabbing herself in his presence; but,
when she again saw him, who so long had been the constant object of her
thoughts and affections, resentment yielded to love; her resolution
failed; she trembled with the conflict of emotions, that assailed her
heart, and fainted away.
The Marquis was not proof against her beauty and sensibility; all the
energy, with which he had first loved, returned, for his passion had
been resisted by prudence, rather than overcome by indifference; and,
since the honour of his family would not permit him to marry her, he
had endeavoured to subdue his love, and had so far succeeded, as to
select the then Marchioness for his wife, whom he loved at first with a
tempered and rational affection. But the mild virtues of that amiable
lady 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, when
Laurentini arrived in Languedoc. This artful Italian soon perceived,
that she had regained her influence over him, and, soothed by the
discovery, she determined to live, and to employ all her enchantments
to win his consent to the diabolical deed, which she believed was
necessary to the security of her happiness. She conducted her scheme
with deep dissimulation and patient perseverance, and, having
completely estranged the affections of the Marquis from his wife, whose
gentle goodness and unimpassioned manners had ceased to please, when
contrasted with the captivations of the Italian, she proceeded to
awaken in his mind the jealousy of pride, for it was no longer that of
love, and even pointed out to him the person, to whom she affirmed the
Marchioness had sacrificed her honour; but Laurentini had first
extorted from him a solemn promise to forbear avenging himself upon his
rival. This was an important part of her plan, for she knew, that, if
his desire of vengeance was restrained towards one party, it would burn
more fiercely towards the other, and he might then, perhaps, be
prevailed on to assist in the horrible act, which would release him
from the only barrier, that withheld him from making her his wife.
The innocent Marchioness, meanwhile, observed, with extreme grief, the
alteration in her husband’s manners. He became reserved and thoughtful
in her presence; his conduct was austere, and sometimes even rude; and
he left her, for many hours together, to weep for his unkindness, and
to form plans for the recovery of his affection. His conduct afflicted
her the more, because, in obedience to the command of her father, she
had accepted his hand, though her affections were engaged to another,
whose amiable disposition, she had reason to believe, would have
ensured her happiness. This circumstance Laurentini had discovered,
soon after her arrival in France, and had made ample use of it in
assisting her designs upon the Marquis, to whom she adduced such
seeming proof of his wife’s infidelity, that, in the frantic rage of
wounded honour, he consented to destroy his wife. A slow poison was
administered, and she fell a victim to the jealousy and subtlety of
Laurentini and to the guilty weakness of her husband.
But the moment of Laurentini’s triumph, the moment, to which she had
looked forward for the completion of all her wishes, proved only the
commencement of a suffering, that never left her to her dying hour.
The passion of revenge, which had in part stimulated her to the
commission of this atrocious deed, died, even at the moment when it was
gratified, and left her to the horrors of unavailing pity and remorse,
which would probably have empoisoned all the years she had promised
herself with the Marquis de Villeroi, had her expectations of an
alliance with him been realised. But he, too, had found the moment of
his revenge to be that of remorse, as to himself, and detestation, as
to the partner of his crime; the feeling, which he had mistaken for
conviction, was no more; and he stood astonished, and aghast, that no
proof remained of his wife’s infidelity, now that she had suffered the
punishment of guilt. Even when he was informed, that she was dying, he
had felt suddenly and unaccountably reassured of her innocence, nor was
the solemn assurance she made him in her last hour, capable of
affording him a stronger conviction of her blameless conduct.
In the first horrors of remorse and despair, he felt inclined to
deliver up himself and the woman, who had plunged him into this abyss
of guilt, into the hands of justice; but, when the paroxysm of his
suffering was over, his intention changed. Laurentini, however, he saw
only once afterwards, and that was, to curse her as the instigator of
his crime, and to say, that he spared her life only on condition, that
she passed the rest of her days in prayer and penance. Overwhelmed with
disappointment, on receiving contempt and abhorrence from the man, for
whose sake she had not scrupled to stain her conscience with human
blood, and, touched with horror of the unavailing crime she had
committed, 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, quitted
Château-le-Blanc, to which he never returned, and endeavoured to lose
the sense of his crime amidst the tumult of war, or the dissipations of
a capital; but his efforts were vain; a deep dejection hung over him
ever after, for which his most intimate friend could not account, and
he, at length, died, with a degree of horror nearly equal to that,
which Laurentini had suffered. The physician, who had observed the
singular appearance of the unfortunate Marchioness, after death, had
been bribed to silence; and, as the surmises of a few of the servants
had proceeded no 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 from prosecuting the Marquis de Villeroi, is uncertain;
but her death was deeply lamented by some part of her family, and
particularly by her brother, M. St. Aubert; for that was the degree of
relationship, which had existed between Emily’s father and the
Marchioness; and there is no doubt, that he suspected the manner of her
death. Many letters passed between the Marquis and him, soon after the
decease of his beloved sister, the subject of which was not known, but
there is reason to believe, that they related to the cause of her
death; and these were the papers, together with some letters of the
Marchioness, who had confided to her brother the occasion of her
unhappiness, which St. Aubert had so solemnly enjoined his daughter to
destroy: and anxiety for her peace had probably made him forbid her to
enquire into the melancholy story, to which they alluded. Such, indeed,
had been his affliction, on the premature death of this his favourite
sister, whose unhappy marriage had from the first excited his tenderest
pity, that he never could hear her named, or mention her himself after
her death, except to Madame St. Aubert. From Emily, whose sensibility
he feared to awaken, he had so carefully concealed her history and
name, that she was ignorant, till now, that she ever had such a
relative as the Marchioness de Villeroi; and from this motive he had
enjoined silence to his only surviving sister, Madame Cheron, who had
scrupulously observed his request.
It was over some of the last pathetic letters of the Marchioness, that
St. Aubert was weeping, when he was observed by Emily, on the eve of
her departure from La Vallée, and it was her picture, which he had so
tenderly caressed. Her disastrous death may account for the emotion he
had betrayed, on hearing her named by La Voisin, and for his request to
be interred near the monument of the Villerois, where her remains were
deposited, 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, recollected
him to be the brother of the late Marchioness, when St. Aubert, from
tenderness to Emily, had conjured him to conceal the circumstance, and
to request that the abbess, to whose care he particularly recommended
her, would do the same; a request, which had been exactly observed.
Laurentini, on her arrival in France, had carefully concealed her name
and family, and, the better to disguise her real history, had, on
entering the convent, caused the story to be circulated, which had
imposed on sister Frances, and it is probable, that the abbess, who did
not preside in the convent, at the time of her noviciation, was also
entirely ignorant of the truth. The deep remorse, that seized on the
mind of Laurentini, together with the sufferings of disappointed
passion, for she still loved the Marquis, again unsettled her
intellects, and, after the first paroxysms of despair were passed, a
heavy and silent melancholy had settled upon her spirits, which
suffered few interruptions from fits of frenzy, till the time of her
death. During many years, it had been her only amusement to walk in the
woods near the monastery, in the solitary hours of night, and to play
upon a favourite instrument, to which she sometimes joined the
delightful melody of her voice, in the most solemn and melancholy airs
of her native country, modulated by all the energetic feeling, that
dwelt in her heart. The physician, who had attended her, recommended it
to the superior to indulge her in this whim, as the only means of
soothing her distempered fancy; and she was suffered to walk in the
lonely hours of night, attended by the servant, who had accompanied her
from Italy; but, as the indulgence transgressed against the rules of
the convent, it was kept as secret as possible; and thus the mysterious
music of Laurentini had combined with other circumstances, to produce a
report, that not only the château, but its neighbourhood, was haunted.
Soon after her entrance into this holy community, and before she had
shown any symptoms of insanity there, she made a will, in which, after
bequeathing a considerable legacy to the convent, she divided the
remainder of her personal property, which her jewels made very
valuable, between the wife of Mons. Bonnac, who was an Italian lady and
her relation, and the nearest surviving relative of the late
Marchioness de Villeroi. As Emily St. Aubert was not only the nearest,
but the sole relative, this legacy descended to her, and thus explained
to her the whole mystery of her father’s conduct.
The resemblance between Emily and her unfortunate aunt had frequently
been observed by Laurentini, and had occasioned the singular behaviour,
which had formerly alarmed her; but it was in the nun’s dying hour,
when her conscience gave her perpetually the idea of the Marchioness,
that she became more sensible, than ever, of this likeness, and, in her
frenzy, deemed it no resemblance of the person she had injured, but the
original herself. The bold assertion, that had followed, on the
recovery of her senses, that Emily was the daughter of the Marchioness
de Villeroi, arose from a suspicion that she was so; for, knowing that
her rival, when she married the Marquis, was attached to another lover,
she had 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 frenzied
confession of murder, that she had been instrumental in the castle of
Udolpho, 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 of
the nun to a consciousness of a murder, committed in that castle.
It may be remembered, that, in a chamber of Udolpho, hung a black veil,
whose singular situation had excited Emily’s curiosity, and which
afterwards disclosed an object, that had overwhelmed her with horror;
for, on lifting it, there appeared, instead of the picture she had
expected, within a recess of the wall, a human figure of ghastly
paleness, stretched at its length, and dressed in the habiliments of
the grave. What added to the horror of the spectacle, was, that the
face appeared partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which were
visible on the 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 had prevented her from ever after provoking a renewal of
such suffering, as she had then experienced. Had she dared to look
again, her delusion and her fears would have vanished together, and she
would have perceived, that the figure before her was not human, but
formed of wax. The history of it is somewhat extraordinary, though not
without example in the records of that fierce severity, which monkish
superstition has sometimes inflicted on mankind. A member of the house
of Udolpho, having committed some offence against the prerogative of
the church, had been condemned to the penance of contemplating, during
certain hours of the day, a waxen image, made to resemble a human body
in the state, to which it is reduced after death. This penance, serving
as a memento of the condition at which he must himself arrive, had been
designed to reprove the pride of the Marquis of Udolpho, which had
formerly so much exasperated that of the Romish church; and he had not
only superstitiously observed this penance himself, which, he had
believed, was to obtain a pardon for all his sins, but had made it a
condition in his will, that his descendants should preserve the image,
on pain of forfeiting to the church a certain part of his domain, that
they also might profit by the humiliating moral it conveyed. The
figure, therefore, had been suffered to retain its station in the wall
of the chamber, but his descendants excused themselves from observing
the penance, to which he had been enjoined.
This image was so horribly natural, that it is not surprising Emily
should have mistaken it for the object it resembled, nor, since she had
heard such an extraordinary account, concerning the disappearing of the
late lady of the castle, and had such experience of the character of
Montoni, that she should have believed this to be the murdered body of
the 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
doors of the chamber, where it was deposited, were afterwards secured,
had compelled her to believe, that Montoni, not daring to confide the
secret of her death to any person, had suffered her remains to decay in
this obscure chamber. The ceremony of the veil, however, and the
circumstance of the doors having been left open, even for a moment, had
occasioned her much wonder and some doubts; but these were not
sufficient to overcome her suspicion of Montoni; and it was the dread
of his terrible vengeance, that had sealed her lips in silence,
concerning what she had seen in the west chamber.
Emily, in discovering the Marchioness de Villeroi to have been the
sister of Mons. St. Aubert, was variously affected; but, amidst the
sorrow, which she suffered for her untimely death, she was released
from an anxious and painful conjecture, occasioned by the rash
assertion of Signora Laurentini, concerning her birth and the honour of
her parents. Her faith in St. Aubert’s principles would scarcely allow
her to suspect that he had acted dishonourably; and she felt such
reluctance to believe herself the daughter of any other, than her, whom
she had always considered and loved as a mother, that she would hardly
admit such a circumstance to be possible; yet the likeness, which it
had frequently been affirmed she bore to the late Marchioness, the
former behaviour of Dorothée the old housekeeper, the assertion of
Laurentini, and the mysterious attachment, which St. Aubert had
discovered, awakened doubts, as to his connection with the Marchioness,
which her reason could neither vanquish, nor 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 her amiable relative, and by the awful
lesson, which the history of the nun exhibited, the indulgence of whose
passions had been the means of leading her gradually to the commission
of a crime, from the prophecy of which in her early years she would
have recoiled in horror, and exclaimed—that it could not be!—a crime,
which whole years of repentance and of the severest penance had not
been able to obliterate from her conscience.