The Monk (21 page)
“No one,” he replied, “is adequate to comprehending the misery of my lot! Fate obliges me to be constantly in movement; I am not permitted to pass more than a fortnight in the same place. I have no friend in the world, and, from the restlessness of my destiny, I never can acquire one. Fain would I lay down my miserable life, for I envy those who enjoy the quiet of the grave: but death eludes me, and flies from my embrace. In vain do I throw myself in the way of danger. I plunge into the ocean; the waves throw me back with abhorrence upon the shore: I rush into fire; the flames recoil at my approach: I oppose myself to the fury of banditti; their swords become blunted, and break against my breast. The hungry tiger shudders at my approach, and the alligator flies from a monster more horrible than itself. God has set his seal upon me, and all his creatures respect this fatal mark.”
He put his hand to the velvet, which was bound round his forehead. There was in his eyes an expression of fury, despair, and malevolence, that struck horror to my very soul. An involuntary convulsion made me shudder. The stranger perceived it.
“Such is the curse imposed on me,” he continued: “I am doomed to inspire all who look on me with terror and detestation. You already feel the influence of the charm, and with every succeeding moment will feel it more. I will not add to your sufferings by my presence. Farewell till Saturday. As soon as the clock strikes twelve, expect me at your chamber-door.”
Having said this he departed, leaving me in astonishment at the mysterious turn of his manner and conversation. His assurances that I should soon be relieved from the apparition’s visits, produced a good effect upon my constitution. Theodore, whom I rather treated as an adopted child than a domestic, was surprised at his return to observe the amendment in my looks. He congratulated me on this symptom of returning health, and declared himself delighted at my having received so much benefit from my conference with the Great Mogul. Upon enquiry I found that the stranger had already passed eight days in Ratisbon. According to his own account, therefore, he was only to remain there six days longer. Saturday was still at the distance of three. Oh! with what impatience did I expect its arrival! In the interim, the bleeding nun continued her nocturnal visits; but hoping soon to be released from them altogether, the effects which they produced on me became less violent than before.
The wished-for night arrived. To avoid creating suspicion I retired to bed at my usual hour. But as soon as my attendants had left me, I dressed myself again, and prepared for the stranger’s reception. He entered my room upon the turn of midnight. A small chest was in his hand, which he placed near the stove. He saluted me without speaking; I returned the compliment, observing an equal silence. He then opened his chest. The first thing which he produced was a small wooden crucifix: he sunk upon his knees, gazed upon it mournfully, and cast his eyes towards heaven. He seemed to be praying devoutly. At length he bowed his head respectfully, kissed the crucifix thrice, and quitted his kneeling posture. He next drew from the chest a covered goblet: with the liquor which it contained, and which appeared to be blood, he sprinkled the floor; and then dipping in it one end of the crucifix, he described a circle in the middle of the room. Round about this he placed various reliques, sculls, thigh-bones, &c. I observed, that he disposed them all in the forms of crosses. Lastly, he took out a large bible, and beckoned me to follow him into the circle. I obeyed.
“Be cautious not to utter a syllable!” whispered the stranger: “step not out of the circle, and as you love yourself, dare not to look upon my face!”
Holding the crucifix in one hand, the bible in the other, he seemed to read with profound attention. The clock struck one! As usual I heard the spectre’s steps upon the stair-case: but I was not seized with the accustomed shivering. I waited her approach with confidence. She entered the room, drew near the circle, and stopped. The stranger muttered some words, to me unintelligible. Then raising his head from the book, and extending the crucifix towards the ghost, he pronounced, in a voice distinct and solemn,
“Beatrice! Beatrice! Beatrice!”
“What wouldst thou?” replied the apparition in a hollow faltering tone.
“What disturbs thy sleep? Why dost thou afflict and torture this youth? How can rest be restored to thy unquiet spirit?”
“I dare not tell! I must not tell! Fain would I repose in my grave, but stern commands force me to prolong my punishment!”
“Knowest thou this blood? Knowest thou in whose veins it flowed? Beatrice! Beatrice! In his name, I charge thee to answer me.”
“I dare not disobey my taskers.”
“Darest thou disobey me?”
He spoke in a commanding tone, and drew the sable band from his forehead. In spite of his injunctions to the contrary, curiosity would not suffer me to keep my eyes off his face: I raised them, and beheld a burning cross impressed upon his brow. For the horror with which this object inspired me I cannot account, but I never felt its equal. My senses left me for some moments: a mysterious dread overcame my courage; and had not the exorciser caught my hand, I should have fallen out of the circle.
When I recovered myself, I perceived that the burning cross had produced an effect no less violent upon the spectre. Her countenance expressed reverence and horror, and her visionary limbs were shaken by fear.
“Yes!” she said at length, “I tremble at that mark! I respect it! I obey you! Know then, that my bones lie still unburied: they rot in the obscurity of Lindenberg Hole. None but this youth has the right of consigning them to the grave. His own lips have made over to me his body and his soul: never will I give back his promise, never shall he know a night devoid of terror, unless he engages to collect my mouldering bones, and deposit them in the family vault of his Andalusian castle. Then let thirty masses be said for the repose of my spirit, and I trouble this world no more. Now let me depart. Those flames are scorching!”
He let the hand drop slowly which held the crucifix, and which till then he had pointed towards her. The apparition bowed her head, and her form melted into air. The exorciser led me out of the circle. He replaced the bible, &c. in the chest, and then addressed himself to me, who stood near him speechless from astonishment.
“Don Raymond, you have heard the conditions on which repose is promised you. Be it your business to fulfil them to the letter. For me, nothing more remains than to clear up the darkness still spread over the spectre’s history, and inform you, that when living Beatrice bore the name of las Cisternas. She was the great aunt of your grandfather. In quality of your relation, her ashes demand respect from you, though the enormity of her crimes must excite your abhorrence. The nature of those crimes no one is more capable of explaining to you than myself. I was personally acquainted with the holy man who proscribed her nocturnal riots in the castle of Lindenberg, and I hold this narrative from his own lips.
“Beatrice de las Cisternas took the veil at an early age, not by her own choice, but at the express command of her parents. She was then too young to regret the pleasures of which her profession deprived her: but no sooner did her warm and voluptuous character begin to be developed, than she abandoned herself freely to the impulse of her passions, and seized the first opportunity to procure their gratification. This opportunity was at length presented, after many obstacles which only added new force to her desires. She contrived to elope from the convent, and fled to Germany with the baron Lindenberg. She lived at his castle several months as his avowed concubine. All Bavaria was scandalized by her impudent and abandoned conduct. Her feasts vied in luxury with Cleopatra’s, and Lindenberg became the theatre of the most unbridled debauchery. Not satisfied with displaying the incontinence of a prostitute, she professed herself an atheist: she took every opportunity to scoff at her monastic vows, and loaded with ridicule the most sacred ceremonies of religion.
“Possessed of a character so depraved, she did not long confine her affections to one object. Soon after her arrival at the castle, the baron’s younger brother attracted her notice by his strong-marked features, gigantic stature, and herculean limbs. She was not of an humour to keep her inclinations long unknown: but she found in Otto von Lindenberg her equal in depravity. He returned her passion just sufficiently to increase it; and when he had worked it up to the desired pitch, he fixed the price of his love at his brother’s murder. The wretch consented to this horrible agreement. A night was pitched upon for perpetrating the deed. Otto, who resided on a small estate a few miles distant from the castle, promised that, at one in the morning, he would be waiting for her at Lindenberg-hole; that he would bring with him a party of chosen friends, by whose aid he doubted not being able to make himself master of the castle; and that his next step should be the uniting her hand to his. It was this last promise which over-ruled every scruple of Beatrice, since, in spite of his affection for her, the baron had declared positively, that he never would make her his wife.
“The fatal night arrived. The baron slept in the arms of his perfidious mistress, when the castle bell struck ‘one.’ Immediately Beatrice drew a dagger from underneath her pillow, and plunged it in her paramour’s heart. The baron uttered a single dreadful groan, and expired. The murderess quitted her bed hastily, took a lamp in one hand, in the other the bloody dagger, and bent her course towards the cavern. The porter dared not to refuse opening the gates to one more dreaded in the castle than its master. Beatrice reached Lindenberg-hole unopposed, where, according to promise, she found Otto waiting for her. He received, and listened to her narrative with transport: but ere she had time to ask why he came unaccompanied, he convinced her that he wished for no witnesses to their interview. Anxious to conceal his share in the murder, and to free himself from a woman whose violent and atrocious character made him tremble with reason for his own safety, he had resolved on the destruction of his wretched agent. Rushing upon her suddenly, he wrested the dagger from her hand. He plunged it, still reeking with his brother’s blood, in her bosom, and put an end to her existence by repeated blows.
“Otto now succeeded to the barony of Lindenberg. The murder was attributed solely to the fugitive nun, and no one suspected him to have persuaded her to the action. But though his crime was unpunished by man, God’s justice permitted him not to enjoy in peace his blood-stained honours. Her bones lying still unburied in the cave, the restless soul of Beatrice continued to inhabit the castle. Dressed in her religious habit, in memory of her vows broken to heaven, furnished with the dagger which had drunk the blood of her paramour, and holding the lamp which had guided her flying steps, every night did she stand before the bed of Otto. The most dreadful confusion reigned through the castle. The vaulted chambers resounded with shrieks and groans; and the spectre, as she ranged along the antique galleries, uttered an incoherent mixture of prayers and blasphemies. Otto was unable to withstand the shock which he felt at this fearful vision: its horrors increased with every succeeding appearance. His alarm at length became so insupportable, that his heart burst, and one morning he was found in his bed totally deprived of warmth and animation. His death did not put an end to the nocturnal riots. The bones of Beatrice continued to lie unburied, and her ghost continued to haunt the castle.
“The domains of Lindenberg now fell to a distant relation. But terrified by the accounts given him of the bleeding nun [so was the spectre called by the multitude] the new baron called to his assistance a celebrated exorciser. This holy man succeeded in obliging her to temporary repose: but though she discovered to him her history, he was not permitted to reveal it to others, or cause her skeleton to be removed to hallowed ground. That office was reserved for you; and till your coming her ghost was doomed to wander about the castle, and lament the crime which she had there committed. However, the exorciser obliged her to silence during his life-time. So long as he existed, the haunted chamber was shut up, and the spectre was invisible. At his death, which happened in five years after, she again appeared, but only once on every fifth year, on the same day and at the same hour when she plunged her knife in the heart of her sleeping lover: she then visited the cavern which held her mouldering skeleton, returned to the castle as soon as the clock struck two, and was seen no more till the next five years had elapsed.
“She was doomed to suffer during the space of a century. That period is past. Nothing now remains but to consign to the grave the ashes of Beatrice. I have been the means of releasing you from your visionary tormentor; and amidst all the sorrows which oppress me, to think that I have been of use to you, is some consolation. Youth, farewell! May the ghost of your relation enjoy that rest in the tomb, which the Almighty’s vengeance has denied to me for ever!”
Here the stranger prepared to quit the apartment.
“Stay yet one moment!” said I; “you have satisfied my curiosity with regard to the spectre, but you leave me a prey to yet greater respecting yourself. Deign to inform me to whom I am under such real obligations. You mention circumstances long past, and persons long dead: you were personally acquainted with the exorciser, who, by your own account, has been deceased near a century. How am I to account for this? What means that burning cross upon your forehead, and why did the sight of it strike such horror to my soul?”
On these points he for some time refused to satisfy me. At length, overcome by my entreaties, he consented to clear up the whole, on condition that I would defer his explanation till the next day. With this request I was obliged to comply, and he left me. In the morning my first care was to enquire after the mysterious stranger. Conceive my disappointment, when informed that he had already quitted Ratisbon. I dispatched messengers in pursuit of him, but in vain. No traces of the fugitive were discovered. Since that moment I never have heard any more of him, and ’Tis most probable that I never shall.