Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,
Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres,
Lingering, and sitting, by a new-made grave.
MILTON
On the following day, Montoni sent a second excuse to Emily, who was
surprised at the circumstance. 'This is very strange!' said she to
herself. 'His conscience tells him the purport of my visit, and he
defers it, to avoid an explanation.' She now almost resolved to throw
herself in his way, but terror checked the intention, and this day
passed, as the preceding one, with Emily, except that a degree of awful
expectation, concerning the approaching night, now somewhat disturbed
the dreadful calmness that had pervaded her mind.
Towards evening, the second part of the band, which had made the first
excursion among the mountains, returned to the castle, where, as they
entered the courts, Emily, in her remote chamber, heard their loud
shouts and strains of exultation, like the orgies of furies over
some horrid sacrifice. She even feared they were about to commit some
barbarous deed; a conjecture from which, however, Annette soon relieved
her, by telling, that the people were only exulting over the plunder
they had brought with them.
This circumstance still further confirmed
her in the belief, that Montoni had really commenced to be a captain of
banditti, and meant to retrieve his broken fortunes by the plunder of
travellers! Indeed, when she considered all the circumstances of his
situation--in an armed, and almost inaccessible castle, retired far
among the recesses of wild and solitary mountains, along whose distant
skirts were scattered towns, and cities, whither wealthy travellers were
continually passing--this appeared to be the situation of all others
most suited for the success of schemes of rapine, and she yielded to
the strange thought, that Montoni was become a captain of robbers. His
character also, unprincipled, dauntless, cruel and enterprising, seemed
to fit him for the situation. Delighting in the tumult and in the
struggles of life, he was equally a stranger to pity and to fear; his
very courage was a sort of animal ferocity; not the noble impulse of
a principle, such as inspirits the mind against the oppressor, in the
cause of the oppressed; but a constitutional hardiness of nerve, that
cannot feel, and that, therefore, cannot fear.
Emily's supposition, however natural, was in part erroneous, for she was
a stranger to the state of this country and to the circumstances, under
which its frequent wars were partly conducted. The revenues of the many
states of Italy being, at that time, insufficient to the support of
standing armies, even during the short periods, which the turbulent
habits both of the governments and the people permitted to pass in
peace, an order of men arose not known in our age, and but faintly
described in the history of their own. Of the soldiers, disbanded at
the end of every war, few returned to the safe, but unprofitable
occupations, then usual in peace. Sometimes they passed into other
countries, and mingled with armies, which still kept the field.