The Monk - Matthew Gregory Lewis [186]
The remaining years of Raymond and Agnes, of Lorenzo and Virginia, were happy as can be those allotted to mortals, born to be the prey of grief, and sport of disappointment. The exquisite sorrows with which they had been afflicted, made them think lightly of every succeeding woe. They had felt the sharpest darts in misfortune’s quiver. Those which remained, appeared blunt in comparison. Having weathered fate’s heaviest storms, they looked calmly upon its terrors: or, if ever they felt affliction’s casual gales, they seemed to them gentle as zephyrs which breathe over summer-seas.
CHAP. XII.
——He was a fell despightful fiend:
Hell holds none worse in baleful bower below:
By pride, and wit, and rage, and rancor keened:
Of man, alike if good or bad, the foe.
THOMSON.
On the day following Antonia’s death, all Madrid was a scene of consternation and amazement. An archer who had witnessed the adventure in the sepulchre, had indiscreetly related the circumstances of the murder: he had also named the perpetrator. The confusion was without example, which this intelligence raised among the devotees. Most of them disbelieved it, and went themselves to the abbey to ascertain the fact. Anxious to avoid the shame to which their superior’s ill conduct exposed the whole brotherhood, the monks assured the visitors, that Ambrosio was prevented from receiving them as usual by nothing but illness. This attempt was unsuccessful. The same excuse being repeated day after day, the archer’s story gradually obtained confidence. His partisans abandoned him: no one entertained a doubt of his guilt: and they who before had been the warmest in his praise, were now the most vociferous in his condemnation.
While his innocence or guilt was debated in Madrid with the utmost acrimony, Ambrosio was a prey to the pangs of conscious villany, and the terrors of punishment impending over him. When he looked back to the eminence on which he had lately stood, universally honoured and respected, at peace with the world and with himself, scarcely could he believe that he was indeed the culprit, whose crimes and whose fate he trembled to consider. But a few weeks had elapsed, since he was pure and virtuous, courted by the wisest and noblest in Madrid, and regarded by the people with a reverence that approached idolatry. He now saw himself stained with the most loathed and monstrous sins, the object of universal execration, a prisoner of the Holy Office, and probably doomed to perish in tortures the most severe. He could not hope to deceive his judges: the proofs of his guilt were too strong. His being in the sepulchre at so late an hour, his confusion at the discovery, the dagger which in his first alarm he owned had been concealed by him, and the blood which had spirted upon his habit from Antonia’s wound, sufficiently marked him out for the assassin. He waited with agony for the day of examination. He had no resource to comfort him in his distress. Religion could not inspire him with fortitude. If he read the books of morality which were put into his hands, he saw in them nothing but the enormity of his offences. If he attempted to pray, he recollected that he deserved not Heaven’s protection, and believed his crimes so monstrous as to exceed even God’s infinite goodness. For every other sinner he thought there might be hope, but for him there could be none. Shuddering at the past, anguished by the present, and dreading the future, thus passed he the few days preceding that which was marked for his trial.
That day arrived. At nine in the morning his prison-door was unlocked; and his gaoler entering, commanded him to follow him. He obeyed with trembling. He was conducted into a spacious hall hung with black cloth. At the table sat three grave stern-looking men, also habited in black: one was the Grand Inquisitor, whom the importance of this cause had induced to examine into it himself. At