 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Vali. The Mysteries of Udolfo by Anne Ratcliff, Volume 4, Chapter 17. 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 gestures, commence the ingredients of our poison di chalice to our own lips. Some circumstances of an extraordinary nature, now with true Emily, from her own sorrows and excited emotions, which partake of both surprise and horror. A few days followed that, on which Signoa Laurentini died, however it was opened at the monastery, in the presence of the superiors and Montseobhanac, when it was found that one-third of her personal property was bequeathed to the nearest surviving relative of the late Marcianus de Valeroy, and that Emily was the person. With the secret of Emily's family, the emiss had long been acquainted, and it was an observance of the earnest request of Sanovor, who was known to a friar, that attended him on his deathbed, that his daughter had remained in ignorance of her relationship to the Marcianus. But some hints which had fallen from Signoa Laurentini during her last interview with Emily, and a confession of a very extraordinary nature given in her dying hours, had made the abyss think it necessary to converse with her young friend, on the topic she had not before when she had 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 in this position 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 narrator of the abyss 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 Marcianus de Valeroy, we shall omit the conversation that passed in the power of the convent and mingle with that relation a brief history of Laurentini de Udolfo, who was the only child of her parents and heiress of the ancient house of Udolfo, in the territory of Venice. It was the first misfortune of her life 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 contests for victory, in which the due tenderness of the parents and the affectionate duties of the child were equally forgotten. But as returning fondness discerned 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 contradicting nations, 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 Villaroi, who on his tour through Italy saw Laurentini at Venice, where she usually recited and became her passionate adora. 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, self-actually, 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 map shields were concluded, she retired to the castle of Udolfo, where 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 minute inquiry that 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 Udolfo, he was called abruptly to France, with her he returned with extreme reluctance, but his heart was still fascinated by the arts of Laurentini, with whom however he had on various pretenses 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. So moved in some degree by these assurances, she suffered him to depart, and soon after her relative, Montoni, arriving at Udolfo, renewed the addresses which she had before refused, and which she now again rejected. Meanwhile, her thoughts were constantly with the Marquis de Villarrois, 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 gait 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 an almost intolerable expectation. During this interval, Laurentini's fancy occupied insistently 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 about the Marquis de Villarrois, and her days were marked at intervals with the frenzy of passion and the solanness 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 favorite female attendant, writing scraps of letter, reading again and again those she had received from the Marquis, weeping over his picture and speaking to it, for many years abrading, 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 favorite woman only, she confided the plan of her journey, and she engaged her to partake of it. Having connected the 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 neighboring town, with a Laurentine, with this only servant, followed, and then proceeded secretly to Legon, where then bought for France. When, on her arrival in Languedoc, she found that the Marquis de Villarroix had been married for some months, her despair almost deprived her of reason, and she ultimately 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 owner 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 Marquis for his wife, whom he loved at first with a tempered and rational affection. But the mind-wash use 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 Marquis earnest had sacrificed her honour. But Laurentini had first extorted from him a solemn promise to Phobia avenging himself upon his arrival. 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 Thadda, and he might then 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 Marquis 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 had used such ceiling 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 movement of Laurentini's triumph, the movement 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 unwavering pity and remorse, which would probably have empoisoned all the years she had promised herself with the Marquis de Villaroy, had her expectations of an alliance with him being realised. But he too had found the movement 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 an unaccountably reassured of her innocence, nor was the solemn assurance she made him in her dying 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 proxies 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 ignorance from the man for whose sake she had not scrupled to stain her conscience with human blood and touched with horror of the unawailing crime she had committed, she renounced the world and retired to the monastery of St. Clair, a dreadful victim to unresisted passion. The marketplace immediately after the death of his wife, quitted Chateau Leblanc, to which he never returned, and endeavored 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 Markianus after death had been bribed to silence, and as the surmises of a few servants had proceeded no further than a whisper, their fare had never been investigated. Whether this whisper ever reached the father of the Markianus, and if it did, whether the difficulty of obtaining proof deterred him from prosecuting the Marquis de Villarrois is uncertain. But her death was deeply lamented by some part of her family, and particularly by her brother, Montia Sanobro, for that was the degree of relationship which had existed between Emily's father and the Markianus. And there is no doubt that he suspected the manner of her death. Many letters passed between the Marquis and him, soon after the disease 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 Markianus who had confided to her brother the location of her unhappiness, which Sanobro had so solemnly enjoined his daughter to destroy, and anxiety for her peace had probably made him forbid her to inquire into the melancholy story to which they looted. Such indeed has been his affliction on the premature death of his favorite sister, whose unhappy marriage had from the first excited his tenderest pity that he could never hear her named or mention her himself after her death except to Madame Sanobro. 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 Markianus de Villeroy, and from this motive he had enjoined silence to his only surviving sister, Madame Sharon, who had scrupulously observed his request. It was over some of the last pathetic letters of the Markianus that Sanobro was weeping when he was discovered by Emily on the eve of her departure from La Valley, 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 Voicin, and for his request to be interred near the monument of the Villeroy, 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 Sanobro in his last moments recollected him to be the brother of the late Markianus, when Sanobro, from tenderness to Emily, had congealed him to conceal the circumstance and to request that the abyss 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 Francis, and it is probable that the abyss, who did not preside in the convent at the time of her noviceation, 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 Marquess, again unsettled her intellect, and after the first proxisms of despair were passed, a heavy and silent melancholy had settled upon her spirits, which suffered few interruptions from Fitts 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 favorite 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 chattel, but its neighborhood 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 Monsia Bonac, who was an Italian lady, and her relation, and the nearest surviving relative of the late Marcianus de Valeroy. As Emily Sanova 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 behavior which had formally alarmed her. But it was in the nun's dying hour, when her consigns gave her perpetually the idea of the Marcianus 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 world assertion that had followed on the recovery of her senses, that Emily was the daughter of the Marcianus de Valeroy 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 scruples to believe that her honor 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 Udolfo, Laurentini was innocent, and she had herself been deceived concerning the spectacle that formally 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 Udolfo hung a black pail, whose singular situation had excited Emily's curiosity, and which afterwards disclosed an object that had overwhelmed her with horror. For unlifting 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 wheel 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 facts. The history of it is somewhat extraordinary, though not without example, in the records of that fear's severity, which monkish superstition has sometimes inflicted on mankind. A member of the house of Udolfo, 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 vaccine image may resemble a human body in the state to which it is reduced after death. This penance, serving as a memento of the condition to which he must himself arrive, had been designed to reprove the pride of the Marquis of Udolfo, who 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 un-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 had 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 complexity, 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 wail 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 Marcianus de Villeroy to have been the sister of Montia Sanauber, 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 honor of her parents. Her faith in Sanauber's principles would scarcely allow her to suspect that he had acted dishonorably, 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 Marcianus, the former behavior of Dorothy the old housekeeper, the assertion of Laurentini and the mysterious attachment which Sanauber had discovered awakened doubts as to his connection with the Marcianus, 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 permeable 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 required 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 consigns. CHAPTER XVIII Then fresh tears stood on her cheek as doth the honeydew upon a gathered lily almost withered. Shakespeare. After the late discoveries, Emily was distinguished at the chateau by the Count and his family as a relative of the House of Villaroy, and received, if possible, more friendly attention than had yet been shown her. Count de Vilfort's surprise at the delay of an answer to his letter, which had been directed to Valencourt at his studio, was mingled with the satisfaction for the prudence which had saved Emily from a share of the anxiety he now suffered. Though when he saw her still drooping under the effect of his former error, all his resolution was necessary to restrain him from relating the truth that would afford her momentary relief. The approaching nuptials of the Lady Blanche now divided his attention with the subject of his anxiety, for the inhabitants of the chateau were already busied in preparations for that event, and the arrival of Monsieur Le Foix was daily expected. In the gaiety which surrounded her, Emily vainly tried to participate, her spirits being depressed by the late discoveries and by the anxiety concerning the fate of Valencourt that had been occasioned by the description of his manner when he had delivered the ring. She seemed to perceive in it the gloomy wilderness of despair, and, when she considered to what that despair might have urged him, her heart sank with terror and grief. The state of suspense, as to his safety, to which she believed herself condemned, till she should return to Le Valet, appeared insupportable, and in such moments she could not even struggle to assume the composure that had left her mind, but would often abruptly quit the company she was with and endeavour to soothe her spirits in the deep soliditudes of the woods that overbrowed the shore. Here the faint roar of foaming waves that beat below and the sullen murmur of the wind among the branches around, were circumstances in unison with the temper of her mind, and she would sit on a cliff or on the broken steps of her favourite watchtower, observing the changing colours of the evening clouds and the gloom of twilight draw over the sea, till the white tops of billows riding towards the shore could scarcely be discerned amidst the darkened waters. The lines engraved by Valencourt on this tower she frequently repeated with melancholy enthusiasm, and then would endeavour to check the recollections and the grief they occasioned, and turned her thoughts to indifferent subjects. One evening, having wandered with her lute to this her favourite spot, she entered the ruined tower and ascended a winding staircase that led to a small chamber, which was less decayed than the rest of the building, and whence she had often gazed with admiration on the wide prospect of sea and land that extended below. The sun was now setting on that track to the Pyrenees, which divided Languedoc from Lucilio, and, placing herself opposite to a small gated window, which, like the wood tops beneath and the waves lower still, gleamed with the red glow of the west, she touched the cords of her lute in solemn symphony, and then accompanied it with her voice, in one of the simple and affecting airs, to which, in happier days, Valencourt had often listened in rapture, and which she now adapted to the following lines. To melancholy, spirit of love and sorrow, hail, thy solemn voice from far I hear, mingled with the evenings dying gale, hail with this sadly pleasing tear. Oh, at this still, this lonely hour, thine own sweet hour of closing day, awake thy lute, whose charmful power shall call up fancy to obey. To paint the wild romantic dream that meets the poet's musing eye, as, on the bank of shadowy stream, he breezed to her the fervid sigh. Oh, lonely spirit, let thy song lead me through all thy sacred haunt, the ministers of moonlight aisles along, where spectres raise the midnight chant. I hear their dirges faintly swell, then sink at once in silence drear, while from the pillared cloister cell dimly their gliding forms appear. Lead where the pine woods wave on high, whose pathless sod is darkly seen, as the cold moon with trembling eye darts her long beams the leaves between. Lead to the mountain's dusky head, where far below in shade profound, wide forest, plains and hamlets spread and sad the chimes of vesper sound. Or guide me, where the dashing oar just breaks the stillness of the veil, as slow it tracks the winding shore to meet the ocean's distant sail. To pebbly banks the Neptune laves with measured surges loud and deep, where the dark cliff bends all the waves, and wild the winds of autumn sweep. Their pours at midnight's spectred hour, and list the long resounding gale, and catch the fleeting moonlight's power, or forming seas and distant sail. The soft tranquillity of the scene below, where the evening breeze scarcely curled the water, or swelled the passing sail, that caught the last gleam of the sun, and where now and then a dipping oar was all that disturbed the trembling radiance, conspired with the tender melody of her lute to lull her mind into a state of gentle sadness, and she sung the mournful songs of past times till the remembrances they awakened were too powerful for her heart. Her tears fell upon the lute, of a which she drooped, and her voice trempled, and was unable to proceed. Though the sun had now sunk behind the mountains, and even his reflected light was fading from their highest points, Emily did not leave the watchtower, but continued to indulge her melancholy reverie till a footstep, at a little distance, startled her, and on looking through the grate, she observed a person walking below, whom, however, soon perceiving to be Monsieur Bonac, she returned to the quiet thoughtfulness his step had interrupted. After some time she again struck her lute, and sung her favourite air, but again a step disturbed her, and, as she paused to listen, she heard it ascending the staircase of the tower. The gloom of the hour perhaps made her sensible to some degree of fear, which she might not otherwise have felt, for only a few minutes before she had seen Monsieur Bonac pass. The steps were quick and bounding, and, in the next moment, the door of the chamber opened, and a person entered, whose features were veiled in the obscurity of twilight. But his voice could not be concealed, for it was the voice of Valencourt. At the sound, never heard by Emily, without emotion, she started in terror, astonishment and doubtful pleasure, and had scarcely beheld him at her feet, when she sunk into a seat, overcome by the various emotions that contended at her heart, and almost insensible to that voice, whose earnest and trembling calls seemed as if endeavouring to save her. Valencourt, as he hung over Emily, deplored his own rash impatience, and having thus surprised her, for when he had arrived at the chateau, too anxious to await the return of the count, who he understood was in the grounds, he went himself to seek him. When, as he passed the tower, he was struck by the sound of Emily's voice, and immediately ascended. It was a considerable time before she revived, but, when her recollection returned, she repulsed his attentions with an air of reserve, and inquired, with as much displeasure as it was possible she could feel in these first moments of his appearance, the occasion of his visit. Ah, Emily, said Valencourt, that air, those words, alas, I have then little to hope, when you cease to esteem me, you cease also to love me. Most true, sir, said Emily, endeavouring to command her trembling voice, and if you had valued my esteem, you would not have given me this new occasion for uneasiness. Valencourt's countenance changed suddenly from the anxieties of doubt to an expression of surprise and dismay. He was silent for a moment, and then said, I have been taught to hope for a very different reception. Is it then true, Emily, that I have lost your regard forever? Am I to believe that, though your esteem for me may return, your affection never can? Can the count have mediated the cruelty which now tortures me with a second death? The voice in which he spoke this alarmed Emily as much as his words surprised her, and with trembling impatience she begged that he would explain them. Can an explanation be necessary? said Valencourt. Do you not know how cruelly my conduct has been misrepresented, that the actions of which she once believed me guilty, and, oh, Emily, how could you so degrade me in your opinion, even for a moment, those actions I hold in as much contempt and abhorrence as yourself? Are you indeed ignorant that Count de Villefort has detected the slanders that have robbed me of all I hold dear on earth, and has invited me hither to justify to you my former conduct? It is surely impossible you can be uninformed of these circumstances, and I am again torturing myself with a false hope. The silence of Emily confirmed this supposition, for the deep twilight would not allow Valencourt to distinguish the astonishment and doubting joy that fixed her features. For a moment she continued unable to speak, then a profound sigh seemed to give some relief to her spirits, and she said, Valencourt, I was, till this moment, ignorant of all the circumstances you have mentioned, the emotion I now suffer may assure you of the truth of this, and that, though I had ceased to esteem, I had not taught myself entirely to forget you. This moment, said Valencourt, in a low voice, and leaning for support against the window, this moment brings with it a conviction that overpowers me. I am dear to you, then, still dear to you, my Emily. Is it necessary that I should tell you so, she replied? Is it necessary that I should say these are the first moments of joy I have known since your departure, and that they repay me for all those of pain I have suffered in the interval? Valencourt sighed deeply and was unable to reply, but as he pressed her hand to his lips, the tears that fell over it spoke a language which could not be mistaken, and to which words were inadequate. Emily, somewhat tranquilised, proposed returning to the chateau, and then for the first time recollected that the Count had invited Valencourt thither to explain his conduct, and that no explanation had yet been given. But, whilst she acknowledged this, her heart would not allow her to dwell for a moment on the possibility of his unworthiness, his look, his voice, his manner, all spoke the noble sincerity which had formally distinguished him, and she again permitted herself to indulge the emotions of a joy more surprising and powerful than she had ever before experienced. Neither Emily or Valencourt were conscious how they reached the chateau, whether they might have been transferred by the spell of a fairy, for anything they could remember, and it was not, till they had reached the great hall, that either of them recollected there were other persons in the world besides themselves. The Count then came forth with surprise, and with the joyfulness of pure benevolence, to welcome Valencourt, and to entreat his forgiveness of the injustice he had done him. Soon after which, Monsignor Bonac joined this happy group, in which he and Valencourt were mutually rejoiced to meet. When the first congratulations were over, and the general joy became somewhat more tranquil, the Count withdrew with Valencourt to the library, where a long conversation passed between them, in which the latter so clearly justified himself of the criminal parts of the conduct, imputed to him, and so candidly confessed, and so feelingly lamented the follies which he had committed, that the Count was confirmed in his belief of all he had hoped. And while he perceived so many noble virtues of Valencourt, and that experience had taught him to detest the follies, which before he had not only admired, he did not scruple to believe that he would pass through life with the dignity of a wise and good man, or to entrust to his care the future happiness of Emily Saint-Ober, for whom he felt the solicitude of a parent. Of this he soon informed her, in a short conversation, when Valencourt had left him. While Emily listened to the relation of the services that Valencourt had rendered Monsieur Bonac, her eyes overflowed with tears of pleasure, and the further conversation of Count de Villefort perfectly dissipated every doubt, as to the past and future conduct of him, to whom she now restored, without fear, the esteem and affection with which he had formally received him. When they returned to the supper-room, the Countess and Lady Blanche met Valencourt with sincere congratulations, and Blanche, indeed, was so much rejoice to see Emily return to happiness, as to forget, for a while, that Monsieur LeFoix had not yet arrived at the chateau, though he had been expected for some hours, but her generous sympathy was, soon after, rewarded by his appearance. He was now perfectly recovered from the wounds received during his perilous adventure among the Pyrenees, the mention of which served to heighten to the parties who had been involved in it, the sense of their present happiness. New congratulations passed between them, and round the supper-table appeared a group of faces, smiling with felicity, but with a felicity which had in each a different character. The smile of Blanche was frank and gay, that of Emily, tender and pensive. Valencourt's was rapturous, tender and gay, alternately. Monsieur LeFoix was joyous, and that of the Count, as he looked on the surrounding party, expressed the tempered complacency of benevolence, while the features of the Countess Henri and Monsieur Bonac discovered fainter traces of animation. Poor Monsieur Dupont did not, by his presence, throw a shade of regret over the company, for when he had discovered that Valencourt was not unworthy of the esteem of Emily, he determined seriously to endeavour at the conquest of his own hopeless affection, and had immediately withdrawn from Chateau Leblanc a conduct which Emily now understood, and rewarded with her admiration and pity. The Count and his guests continued together till a late hour, yielding to the delights of social gaiety, and to the suites of friendship. When Annette heard of the arrival of Valencourt, Nudovico had some difficulty to prevent her going into the supper-room to express her joy, for she declared that she had never been so rejoiced at any accident as this, since she had found Nudovico himself. End of Volume 4 Chapter 18 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Mysteries of Adolfo by Ann Radcliffe Volume 4 Chapter 19 Now my task is smoothly done. I can fly or I can run, quickly to the green earth's end, where the bowed welkin low doth bend, and from thence can soar as soon to the corners of the moon. Milton The marriages of the Lady Blanche and Emily Saint Aubert were celebrated on the same day, and with the ancient baronial magnificence at Chateau Leblanc, the feasts were held in the great hall of the castle, which on this occasion was hung with superb new tapestry, representing the exploits of Charlemagne and his twelve peers. Here were seen the Saracens, with their horrible visors advancing to battle, and there were displayed the wild solemnities of incantation, and the necromantic feats exhibited by the magician Gial before the Emperor. The sumptuous banners of the family of Biliroi, which had long slept in dust, were once more unfurled to wave over the gothic points of painted casements, and music echoed in many a lingering close through every winding gallery and colonnade of that fast edifice. As a net looked down from the corridor upon the hall, whose archers and windows were illuminated with brilliant festoons of lamps, and gazed on the splendid dresses of the dancers, the costly liveries of the attendants, the canopies of purple velvet and gold, and listened to the gay strains that floated along the vaulted roof. She almost fancied herself in an enchanted palace, and declared that she had not met with any place, which charmed her so much, since she read the fairy tales, nay that the fairies themselves at their nightly revels in this old hall could display nothing finer, while old Dorothy, as she surveyed the scene, sighed, and said the castle looked as it was want to do in the time of her youth. After gracing the festivities of Chateau Leblanc, for some days, Balancourt and Emily took leave of their kind friends, and returned to Lavalais, where the faithful Teresa received them with unfeigned joy, and the pleasant shades welcomed them with a thousand tender and affecting remembrances, and while they wandered together over the scenes so long inhabited by the late Monsieur and Madame Saint-Orbert, and Emily pointed out, with pensive affection, their favourite haunts, her present happiness was heightened by considering that it would have been worthy of their approbation, could they have witnessed it. Balancourt led her to the playing-tree on the terrace, where he had first ventured to declare his love, and where now the remembrance of the anxiety he had then suffered, and the retrospect of all the dangers and misfortunes they had each encountered, since last they sat together beneath its broad branches, exalted the sense of their present felicity, which on this spot, sacred to the memory of Saint-Orbert, they solemnly vowed to deserve, as far as possible, by endeavouring to imitate his benevolence, by remembering that superior attainments of every sort bring with them duties of superior exertion, and by affording to their fellow-beings, together with that portion of ordinary comforts, which prosperity always owes to misfortune, the example of lives past in happy thankfulness to God, and therefore in careful tenderness to his creatures. Soon after their return to Lavalais, the brother of Balancourt came to congratulate him on his marriage, and to pay his respects to Emily, with whom he was so much pleased, as well with the prospect of rational happiness, which these nuptials offered to Balancourt, that he immediately resigned to him a part of the rich domain, the whole of which, as he had no family, would of course descend to his brother, on his decease. The estates at Toulouse were disposed of, and Emily purchased, of Monsieur Cunel. The ancient domain of her late father, where having given Annette a marriage portion, she settled her as the housekeeper, and Ludovico as the steward. But since both Balancourt and herself preferred the pleasant and long-loved shades of Lavalais, to the magnificence of Epuaville, they continued to reside there, passing however, a few months in the year at the birthplace of Saint Aubert, in tender respect to his memory. The legacy which had been bequeathed to Emily by Signora Laurentini, she begged Balancourt would allow her to resign to Monsieur Bonac, and Balancourt, when she made the request, felt all the value of the compliment it conveyed. The castle of Odelford, also descended to the wife of Monsieur Bonac, who was the nearest surviving relation of the house of that name, and thus Afluence restored his long oppressed spirits to peace, and his family to comfort. Oh, how joyful it is to tell of happiness, such as that of Balancourt and Emily, to relate that after suffering under the oppression of the vicious and the disdain of the weak, they were at length restored to each other, to the beloved landscapes of their native country, to the securest felicity of this life, that of aspiring to moral and laboring for intellectual improvement, to the pleasures of enlightened society, and to the exercise of the benevolence, which had always animated their hearts, while the bowers of Lavalais became once more the retreat of goodness, wisdom, and domestic blessedness. Oh, useful may it be to have shown, that though the vicious can sometimes pour affliction upon the good, their power is transient, and their punishment certain, and that innocence, though oppressed by injustice, shall, supported by patience, finally triumph over misfortune. And if the weak hand that has recorded this tale has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or by its moral taught him to sustain it, the effort, however humble, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded.