The Mysteries of Udolpho

Retired to her lonely cabin, her melancholy thoughts still hovered

round the body of her deceased parent; and, when she sunk into a kind

of slumber, the images of her waking mind still haunted her fancy. She

thought she saw her father approaching her with a benign countenance;

then, smiling mournfully and pointing upwards, his lips moved, but,

instead of words, she heard sweet music borne on the distant air, and

presently saw his features glow with the mild rapture of a superior

being.

The strain seemed to swell louder, and she awoke. The vision

was gone, but music yet came to her ear in strains such as angels might

breathe. She doubted, listened, raised herself in the bed, and again

listened. It was music, and not an illusion of her imagination. After

a solemn steady harmony, it paused; then rose again, in mournful

sweetness, and then died, in a cadence, that seemed to bear away the

listening soul to heaven. She instantly remembered the music of the

preceding night, with the strange circumstances, related by La Voisin,

and the affecting conversation it had led to, concerning the state of

departed spirits. All that St. Aubert had said, on that subject, now

pressed upon her heart, and overwhelmed it. What a change in a few

hours! He, who then could only conjecture, was now made acquainted with

truth; was himself become one of the departed! As she listened, she was

chilled with superstitious awe, her tears stopped; and she rose, and

went to the window.

All without was obscured in shade; but Emily,

turning her eyes from the massy darkness of the woods, whose waving

outline appeared on the horizon, saw, on the left, that effulgent

planet, which the old man had pointed out, setting over the woods. She

remembered what he had said concerning it, and, the music now coming

at intervals on the air, she unclosed the casement to listen to the

strains, that soon gradually sunk to a greater distance, and tried

to discover whence they came. The obscurity prevented her from

distinguishing any object on the green platform below; and the sounds

became fainter and fainter, till they softened into silence. She

listened, but they returned no more. Soon after, she observed the

planet trembling between the fringed tops of the woods, and, in the next

moment, sink behind them.

Chilled with a melancholy awe, she retired

once more to her bed, and, at length, forgot for a while her sorrows in

sleep. On the following morning, she was visited by a sister of the convent,

who came, with kind offices and a second invitation from the lady

abbess; and Emily, though she could not forsake the cottage, while the

remains of her father were in it, consented, however painful such a

visit must be, in the present state of her spirits, to pay her respects

to the abbess, in the evening.