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heard the river’s murmur as it rolled beside him, but strove in vain to drag himself towards the sound. Blind, maimed, helpless, and despairing, venting his rage in blasphemy and curses, execrating his existence, yet dreading the arrival of death destined to yield him up to greater torments, six miserable days did the villain languish. On the seventh a violent storm arose: the winds in fury rent up rocks and forests: the sky was now black with clouds, now sheeted with fire: the rain fell in torrents; it swelled the stream; the waves overflowed their banks; they reached the spot where Ambrosio lay, and, when they abated, carried with them into the river the corse of the despairing monk.

FINIS.

NOTES

1. Horat.: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B.C.-8 B.C.), Epistles II.ii, 208–209.

PREFACE

1. Imitation of Horace, Epistles I.xx.

2. row called Paternoster: Paternoster Row was a street in London, named for the makers of rosaries (paternosters) who inhabited it during the medieval period. In Lewis’s day, it was the site of numerous booksellers.

3. olio: collection of literary works; miscellany.

4. Stockdale, Hookham, or Debrett: well-known booksellers.

5. chimara: something nonexistent; a product of the imagination.

6. George the Third: George III (1738–1820), king of Great Britain and Ireland between 1760 and 1820. Lewis turned twenty in July 1795. Hague: city in the Netherlands where Lewis was living when he completed the novel.

ADVERTISEMENT

1. the story of the Santon Barsisa, related in The Guardian: The Guardian was a periodical published by Richard Steele between March and October of 1713. In issue number 148, August 31, 1713, Steele published “The History of Santon Barsisa,” a story of an Eastern holy man who succumbs to the temptations of the devil, seduces and kills a maiden, then unsuccessfully attempts to bargain with the devil to escape punishment. Bleeding Nun: The story of the Bleeding Nun appears in Die Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1782–86), collected by Johann Karl August Musäus (1735–87).

VOLUME I

CHAPTER 1

1. Epigraph: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure I.iii.50–53. Angelo pretends to be morally upright and virtuous, but lays plans to seduce a young woman who pleads for the life of her brother, whom Angelo has sentenced to death upon charges of sexual licentiousness (invoking severe laws that had fallen into disuse).

2. Capuchins: Friars of the Franciscan order, their name was derived from the pointed hoods, or capuches, that they wore. It was customary at the time Lewis was writing to regard friars as a class of monks and to use the terms friar and monk interchangeably.

3. St. Francis … St. Mark … St. Agatha: St. Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscan orders and is the patron saint of animals and nature; St. Mark was the author of the second Gospel in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. St. Agatha was a Sicilian martyr. She took a vow of chastity and was persecuted by a high-ranking official, who had her arrested on charges of Christianity in order to try to force her to become his mistress; he imprisoned her in a brothel, then in jail, and ultimately had her tortured to death.

4. Segnora: Lewis’s spelling of señora, the Spanish word for married woman, or madam. Similarly, he uses segnor in place of señor, Spanish for man or sir.

5. Medicean Venus: The Venus of Medici is a famous statue of the Roman goddess of love that was commissioned by the Medici family, rulers of Renaissance Florence and influential patrons of the arts. L. 10 Hamadryad: a wood nymph.

6. chaplet: a string of beads for prayer counting, one-third the size of a rosary.

7. Murcia: a southern Spanish province.

8. St. Barbara: a fourth-century martyr, secluded in a tower by her heathen father and later denounced and put to death at his hands for her devotion to Christianity.

9. seraph: Seraphs are members of the highest order of the nine orders of angels.

10. mauvaise honte: French expression, meaning “false shame” or “shyness.”

11. Cordova: Cordoba, a city in the south of Spain.

12. condé: Spanish, count.