The Mysteries of Udolpho

The resemblance between Emily and her unfortunate aunt had frequently

been observed by Laurentini, and had occasioned the singular behaviour,

which had formerly alarmed her; but it was in the nun's dying hour, when

her conscience gave her perpetually the idea of the Marchioness, that

she became more sensible, than ever, of this likeness, and, in her

phrensy, deemed it no resemblance of the person she had injured, but the

original herself. The bold assertion, that had followed, on the recovery

of her senses, that Emily was the daughter of the Marchioness de

Villeroi, arose from a suspicion that she was so; for, knowing that her

rival, when she married the Marquis, was attached to another lover, she

had scarcely scrupled to believe, that her honour had been sacrificed,

like her own, to an unresisted passion.

Of a crime, however, to which Emily had suspected, from her phrensied

confession of murder, that she had been instrumental in the castle of

Udolpho, Laurentini was innocent; and she had herself been deceived,

concerning the spectacle, that formerly occasioned her so much terror,

and had since compelled her, for a while, to attribute the horrors of

the nun to a consciousness of a murder, committed in that castle.

It may be remembered, that, in a chamber of Udolpho, hung a black

veil, whose singular situation had excited Emily's curiosity, and which

afterwards disclosed an object, that had overwhelmed her with horror;

for, on lifting it, there appeared, instead of the picture she had

expected, within a recess of the wall, a human figure of ghastly

paleness, stretched at its length, and dressed in the habiliments of

the grave. What added to the horror of the spectacle, was, that the face

appeared partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which were visible on

the features and hands. On such an object, it will be readily believed,

that no person could endure to look twice. Emily, it may be recollected,

had, after the first glance, let the veil drop, and her terror had

prevented her from ever after provoking a renewal of such suffering, as

she had then experienced.

Had she dared to look again, her delusion and

her fears would have vanished together, and she would have perceived,

that the figure before her was not human, but formed of wax. The history

of it is somewhat extraordinary, though not without example in the

records of that fierce severity, which monkish superstition has

sometimes inflicted on mankind. A member of the house of Udolpho, having

committed some offence against the prerogative of the church, had been

condemned to the penance of contemplating, during certain hours of the

day, a waxen image, made to resemble a human body in the state, to which

it is reduced after death.