The Mysteries of Udolpho

In the first horrors of remorse and despair, he felt inclined to deliver

up himself and the woman, who had plunged him into this abyss of guilt,

into the hands of justice; but, when the paroxysm of his suffering

was over, his intention changed. Laurentini, however, he saw only once

afterwards, and that was, to curse her as the instigator of his crime,

and to say, that he spared her life only on condition, that she

passed the rest of her days in prayer and penance. Overwhelmed with

disappointment, on receiving contempt and abhorrence from the man,

for whose sake she had not scrupled to stain her conscience with

human blood, and, touched with horror of the unavailing crime she had

committed, she renounced the world, and retired to the monastery of St.

Claire, a dreadful victim to unresisted passion.

The Marquis, immediately after the death of his wife, quitted

Chateau-le-Blanc, to which he never returned, and endeavoured to lose

the sense of his crime amidst the tumult of war, or the dissipations

of a capital; but his efforts were vain; a deep dejection hung over him

ever after, for which his most intimate friend could not account, and

he, at length, died, with a degree of horror nearly equal to that, which

Laurentini had suffered.

The physician, who had observed the singular

appearance of the unfortunate Marchioness, after death, had been bribed

to silence; and, as the surmises of a few of the servants had proceeded

no further than a whisper, the affair had never been investigated.

Whether this whisper ever reached the father of the Marchioness, and,

if it did, whether the difficulty of obtaining proof deterred him from

prosecuting the Marquis de Villeroi, is uncertain; but her death was

deeply lamented by some part of her family, and particularly by her

brother, M. St. Aubert; for that was the degree of relationship, which

had existed between Emily's father and the Marchioness; and there is no

doubt, that he suspected the manner of her death.

Many letters passed between the Marquis and him, soon after the decease of his beloved

sister, the subject of which was not known, but there is reason to

believe, that they related to the cause of her death; and these were the

papers, together with some letters of the Marchioness, who had confided

to her brother the occasion of her unhappiness, which St. Aubert had so

solemnly enjoined his daughter to destroy: and anxiety for her peace had

probably made him forbid her to enquire into the melancholy story,

to which they alluded. Such, indeed, had been his affliction, on the

premature death of this his favourite sister, whose unhappy marriage had

from the first excited his tenderest pity, that he never could hear

her named, or mention her himself after her death, except to Madame St.

Aubert. From Emily, whose sensibility he feared to awaken, he had so

carefully concealed her history and name, that she was ignorant, till

now, that she ever had such a relative as the Marchioness de Villeroi;

and from this motive he had enjoined silence to his only surviving

sister, Madame Cheron, who had scrupulously observed his request.