The Monk - Matthew Gregory Lewis [31]
“Agnes! Agnes!” he exclaimed, while reflecting on his embarrassments, “I already feel thy curse!”
He quitted his cell, determined upon dismissing the feigned Rosario. He appeared at matins; but his thoughts were absent, and he paid them but little attention: his heart and brain were both of them filled with worldly objects, and he prayed without devotion. The service over, he descended into the garden; he bent his steps towards the same spot where on the preceding night he had made this embarrassing discovery: he doubted not that Matilda would seek him there. He was not deceived: she soon entered the hermitage, and approached the monk with a timid air. After a few minutes, during which both were silent, she appeared as if on the point of speaking; but the abbot, who during this time had been summoning up all his resolution, hastily interrupted her. Though still unconscious how extensive was its influence, he dreaded the melodious seduction of her voice.
“Seat yourself by my side, Matilda,” said he, assuming a look of firmness, though carefully avoiding the least mixture of severity; “listen to me patiently, and believe that, in what I shall say, I am not more influenced by my own interest than by yours; believe that I feel for you the warmest friendship, the truest compassion; and that you cannot feel more grieved than I do, when I declare to you that we must never meet again.”
“Ambrosio!” she cried, in a voice at once expressive both of surprise and of sorrow.
“Be calm, my friend! my Rosario! still let me call you by that name so dear to me: our separation is unavoidable; I blush to own how sensibly it affects me.—But yet it must be so; I feel myself incapable of treating you with indifference; and that very conviction obliges me to insist upon your departure. Matilda, you must stay here no longer.”
“Oh! where shall I now seek for probity? Disgusted with a perfidious world, in what happy region does Truth conceal herself? Father, I hoped that she resided here; I thought that your bosom had been her favourite shrine. And you too prove false? Oh God! and you too can betray me?”
“Matilda?”
“Yes, father, yes; ’Tis with justice that I reproach you. Oh! where are your promises? My noviciate is not expired, and yet will you compel me to quit the monastery? Can you have the heart to drive me from you? and have I not received your solemn oath to the contrary?”
“I will not compel you to quit the monastery; you have received my solemn oath to the contrary: but yet, when I throw myself upon your generosity; when I declare to you the embarrassments in which your presence involves me, will you not release me from that oath? Reflect upon the danger of a discovery; upon the opprobrium in which such an event would plunge me: reflect, that my honour and reputation are at stake; and that my peace of mind depends on your compliance. As yet, my heart is free; I shall separate from you with regret, but not with despair. Stay here, and a few weeks will sacrifice my happiness on the altar of your charms; you are but too interesting, too amiable! I should love you, I should doat on you! my bosom would become the prey of desires, which honour and my profession forbid me to gratify. If I resisted them, the impetuosity of my wishes unsatisfied would drive me to madness: if I yielded to the temptation, I should sacrifice to one moment of guilty pleasure, my reputation in this world, my salvation in the next. To you, then, I fly for defence against myself. Preserve me from losing the reward of thirty years of sufferings! preserve me from becoming the victim of remorse! Your heart has already felt the anguish of hopeless love: oh! then, if you really value me, spare mine that anguish! give me back my promise; fly from these walls. Go, and you bear with you my warmest prayers for your happiness, my friendship, my esteem, and admiration: stay, and you become to me the source of danger, of sufferings, of despair. Answer me, Matilda, what is your resolve?” She was silent.—“Will you not speak, Matilda? Will you not name