And now occurred a circumstance that would seem too fantastic to be
told, if it had not actually happened, precisely as we set it down. As
the three friends stood by the bier, they saw that a little stream of
blood had begun to ooze from the dead monk's nostrils; it crept slowly
towards the thicket of his beard, where, in the course of a moment or
two, it hid itself.
"How strange!" ejaculated Kenyon. "The monk died of apoplexy, I suppose,
or by some sudden accident, and the blood has not yet congealed."
"Do you consider that a sufficient explanation?" asked Miriam, with a
smile from which the sculptor involuntarily turned away his eyes. "Does
it satisfy you?"
"And why not?" he inquired.
"Of course, you know the old superstition about this phenomenon of blood
flowing from a dead body," she rejoined. "How can we tell but that the
murderer of this monk (or, possibly, it may be only that privileged
murderer, his physician) may have just entered the church?"
"I cannot jest about it," said Kenyon. "It is an ugly sight!"
"True, true; horrible to see, or dream of!" she replied, with one of
those long, tremulous sighs, which so often betray a sick heart by
escaping unexpectedly. "We will not look at it any more. Come away,
Donatello. Let us escape from this dismal church. The sunshine will do
you good."
When had ever a woman such a trial to sustain as this! By no possible
supposition could Miriam explain the identity of the dead Capuchin,
quietly and decorously laid out in the nave of his convent church, with
that of her murdered persecutor, flung heedlessly at the foot of the
precipice. The effect upon her imagination was as if a strange and
unknown corpse had miraculously, while she was gazing at it, assumed the
likeness of that face, so terrible henceforth in her remembrance. It was
a symbol, perhaps, of the deadly iteration with which she was doomed
to behold the image of her crime reflected back upon her in a thousand
ways, and converting the great, calm face of Nature, in the whole, and
in its innumerable details, into a manifold reminiscence of that one
dead visage.
No sooner had Miriam turned away from the bier, and gone a few steps,
than she fancied the likeness altogether an illusion, which would vanish
at a closer and colder view. She must look at it again, therefore, and
at once; or else the grave would close over the face, and leave the
awful fantasy that had connected itself therewith fixed ineffaceably in
her brain.
"Wait for me, one moment!" she said to her companions. "Only a moment!"
So she went back, and gazed once more at the corpse. Yes; these were
the features that Miriam had known so well; this was the visage that she
remembered from a far longer date than the most intimate of her friends
suspected; this form of clay had held the evil spirit which blasted her
sweet youth, and compelled her, as it were, to stain her womanhood
with crime. But, whether it were the majesty of death, or something
originally noble and lofty in the character of the dead, which the soul
had stamped upon the features, as it left them; so it was that Miriam
now quailed and shook, not for the vulgar horror of the spectacle, but
for the severe, reproachful glance that seemed to come from between
those half-closed lids. True, there had been nothing, in his lifetime,
viler than this man. She knew it; there was no other fact within her
consciousness that she felt to be so certain; and yet, because her
persecutor found himself safe and irrefutable in death, he frowned upon
his victim, and threw back the blame on her!