The Mysteries of Udolpho

This penance, serving as a memento of the

condition at which he must himself arrive, had been designed to

reprove the pride of the Marquis of Udolpho, which had formerly so

much exasperated that of the Romish church; and he had not only

superstitiously observed this penance himself, which, he had believed,

was to obtain a pardon for all his sins, but had made it a condition

in his will, that his descendants should preserve the image, on pain of

forfeiting to the church a certain part of his domain, that they

also might profit by the humiliating moral it conveyed. The figure,

therefore, had been suffered to retain its station in the wall of the

chamber, but his descendants excused themselves from observing the

penance, to which he had been enjoined.

This image was so horribly natural, that it is not surprising Emily

should have mistaken it for the object it resembled, nor, since she had

heard such an extraordinary account, concerning the disappearing of the

late lady of the castle, and had such experience of the character of

Montoni, that she should have believed this to be the murdered body of

the lady Laurentini, and that he had been the contriver of her death.

The situation, in which she had discovered it, occasioned her, at first,

much surprise and perplexity; but the vigilance, with which the doors

of the chamber, where it was deposited, were afterwards secured, had

compelled her to believe, that Montoni, not daring to confide the secret

of her death to any person, had suffered her remains to decay in this

obscure chamber. The ceremony of the veil, however, and the circumstance

of the doors having been left open, even for a moment, had occasioned

her much wonder and some doubts; but these were not sufficient to

overcome her suspicion of Montoni; and it was the dread of his terrible

vengeance, that had sealed her lips in silence, concerning what she had

seen in the west chamber.

Emily, in discovering the Marchioness de Villeroi to have been the

sister of Mons. St. Aubert, was variously affected; but, amidst the

sorrow, which she suffered for her untimely death, she was released from

an anxious and painful conjecture, occasioned by the rash assertion of

Signora Laurentini, concerning her birth and the honour of her parents.

Her faith in St. Aubert's principles would scarcely allow her to suspect

that he had acted dishonourably; and she felt such reluctance to

believe herself the daughter of any other, than her, whom she had always

considered and loved as a mother, that she would hardly admit such a

circumstance to be possible; yet the likeness, which it had frequently

been affirmed she bore to the late Marchioness, the former behaviour

of Dorothee the old housekeeper, the assertion of Laurentini, and the

mysterious attachment, which St. Aubert had discovered, awakened doubts,

as to his connection with the Marchioness, which her reason could

neither vanquish, or confirm.