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.