The Monk - Matthew Gregory Lewis [180]
“Do I see a penitent, or a criminal?” she said at length: “Are those hands raised in contrition for your crimes, or in fear of meeting their punishment? Do those tears acknowledge the justice of your doom, or only solicit mitigation of your sufferings? I fear me, ’Tis the latter!”
She paused, but kept her eye still fixed upon mine.
“Take courage,” she continued; “I wish not for your death, but your repentance. The draught which I administered was no poison, but an opiate. My intention in deceiving you, was to make you feel the agonies of a guilty conscience, had death overtaken you suddenly, while your crimes were still unrepented. You have suffered those agonies; I have brought you to be familiar with the sharpness of death, and I trust that your momentary anguish will prove to you an eternal benefit. It is not my design to destroy your immortal soul, or bid you seek the grave, burthened with the weight of sins unexpiated. No, daughter, far from it; I will purify you with wholesome chastisement, and furnish you with full leisure for contrition and remorse. Hear then my sentence: The ill-judged zeal of your friends delayed its execution, but cannot now prevent it. All Madrid believes you to be no more; your relations are thoroughly persuaded of your death, and the nuns your partisans have assisted at your funeral. Your existence can never be suspected. I have taken such precautions as must render it an impenetrable mystery. Then abandon all thoughts of a world from which you are eternally separated, and employ the few hours which are allowed you in preparing for the next.”
This exordium led me to expect something terrible. I trembled, and would have spoken to deprecate her wrath; but a motion of the domina commanded me to be silent. She proceeded:
“Though of late years unjustly neglected, and now opposed by many of our misguided sisters (whom Heaven convert!) it is my intention to revive the laws of our order in their full force. That against incontinence is severe, but no more than so monstrous an offence demands. Submit to it, daughter, without resistance; you will find the benefit of patience and resignation in a better life than this. Listen then to the sentence of St. Clare.—Beneath these vaults there exist prisons, intended to receive such criminals as yourself: artfully is their entrance concealed, and she who enters them must resign all hopes of liberty. Thither must you now be conveyed. Food shall be supplied you, but not sufficient for the indulgence of appetite: you shall have just enough to keep together body and soul, and its quality shall be the simplest and coarsest. Weep, daughter, weep, and moisten your bread with your tears: God knows, that you have ample cause for sorrow! Chained down in one of these secret dungeons, shut out from the world and light for ever, with no comfort but religion, no society but repentance; thus must you groan away the remainder of your days. Such are St. Clare’s orders; submit to them without repining. Follow me!”
Thunder-struck at this barbarous decree, my little remaining strength abandoned me. I answered only by falling at her feet, and bathing them with tears. The domina, unmoved by my affliction, rose from her seat with a stately air: she repeated her commands in an absolute tone; but my excessive faintness made me unable to obey her. Mariana and Alix raised me from the ground, and carried me forwards in their arms. The prioress moved on, leaning on Violante, and Camilla preceded her with a torch. Thus passed our sad procession along the passages, in silence only broken by my sighs and groans. We stopped before the principal shrine of St. Clare. The statue was removed from its pedestal, though how I knew not. The nuns afterwards raised an iron grate, till then concealed by the image, and let it fall on the other side with a loud crash. The awful sound, repeated by the vaults above and caverns below me, roused me from the despondent apathy in which I had been plunged. I looked before me; an abyss presented itself to my affrighted