The Monk - Matthew Gregory Lewis [32]
“Cruel! cruel!” she exclaimed, wringing her hands in agony; “you know too well that you offer me no choice: you know too well that I can have no will but yours!”
“I was not then deceived. Matilda’s generosity equals my expectations.”
“Yes; I will prove the truth of my affection by submitting to a decree which cuts me to the very heart. Take back your promise. I will quit the monastery this very day. I have a relation, abbess of a convent in Estramadura: to her will I bend my steps, and shut myself from the world for ever. Yet tell me, father, shall I bear your good wishes with me to my solitude? Will you sometimes abstract your attention from heavenly objects to bestow a thought upon me?”
“Ah! Matilda, I fear that I shall think on you but too often for my repose!”
“Then I have nothing more to wish for, save that we may meet in heaven. Farewell, my friend! my Ambrosio! And yet, methinks, I would fain bear with me some token of your regard.”
“What shall I give you?”
“Something—any thing—one of those flowers will be sufficient.” [Here she pointed to a bush of roses, planted at the door of the grotto.] “I will hide it in my bosom, and, when I am dead, the nuns shall find it withered upon my heart.”
The friar was unable to reply: with slow steps, and a soul heavy with affliction, he quitted the hermitage. He approached the bush, and stooped to pluck one of the roses. Suddenly he uttered a piercing cry, started back hastily, and let the flower, which he already held, fall from his hand. Matilda heard the shriek, and flew anxiously towards him.
“What is the matter?” she cried. “Answer me, for God’s sake! What has happened?”
“I have received my death,” he replied in a faint voice: “concealed among the roses—a serpent—”
Here the pain of his wound became so exquisite, that nature was unable to bear it: his senses abandoned him, and he sunk inanimate into Matilda’s arms.
Her distress was beyond the power of description. She rent her hair, beat her bosom, and, not daring to quit Ambrosio, endeavoured by loud cries to summon the monks to her assistance. She at length succeeded. Alarmed by her shrieks, several of the brothers hastened to the spot, and the superior was conveyed back to the abbey. He was immediately put to bed, and the monk, who officiated as surgeon to the fraternity, prepared to examine the wound. By this time Ambrosio’s hand had swelled to an extraordinary size: the remedies which had been administered to him, ’Tis true, restored him to life, but not to his senses: he raved in all the horrors of delirium, foamed at the mouth, and four of the strongest monks were scarcely able to hold him in his bed.
Father Pablos (such was the surgeon’s name) hastened to examine the wounded hand. The monks surrounded the bed, anxiously waiting for the decision: among these the feigned Rosario appeared not the most insensible to the friar’s calamity: he gazed upon the sufferer with inexpressible anguish; and his groans, which every moment escaped from his bosom, sufficiently betrayed the violence of his affliction.
Father Pablos probed the wound. As he drew out his lancet, its point was tinged with a greenish hue. He shook his head mournfully, and quitted the bed side.
“ ’Tis as I feared,” said he; “there is no hope.”
“No hope!” exclaimed the monks with one voice; “say you, no hope?”
“From the sudden effects, I suspected that the abbot was stung by a cientipedoro* : the venom which you see upon my lancet confirms my idea. He cannot live three days.”
“And can no possible remedy be found?” enquired Rosario.
“Without extracting the poison, he cannot recover; and how to extract it is to me still a secret. All that I can do is to apply such herbs to the wound as will relieve the anguish: the patient will be restored to his senses; but the venom will corrupt the whole mass of his blood, and in three days he will exist no longer.”
Excessive was the universal grief at hearing this decision. Pablos, as he had promised, dressed the wound, and then retired, followed by his companions. Rosario alone remained in the