The Castle of Otranto
“By your favour,” said Frederic, “these are no trifles. The enormous
sabre I was directed to in the wood, yon casque, its fellow—are these
visions of this poor maiden’s brain?”
“So Jaquez thinks, may it please your Greatness,” said Bianca. “He says
this moon will not be out without our seeing some strange revolution.
For my part, I should not be surprised if it was to happen to-morrow;
for, as I was saying, when I heard the clattering of armour, I was all in
a cold sweat. I looked up, and, if your Greatness will believe me, I saw
upon the uppermost banister of the great stairs a hand in armour as big
as big. I thought I should have swooned. I never stopped until I came
hither—would I were well out of this castle. My Lady Matilda told me but
yester-morning that her Highness Hippolita knows something.”
“Thou art an insolent!” cried Manfred. “Lord Marquis, it much misgives
me that this scene is concerted to affront me. Are my own domestics
suborned to spread tales injurious to my honour? Pursue your claim by
manly daring; or let us bury our feuds, as was proposed, by the
intermarriage of our children. But trust me, it ill becomes a Prince of
your bearing to practise on mercenary wenches.”
“I scorn your imputation,” said Frederic. “Until this hour I never set
eyes on this damsel: I have given her no jewel. My Lord, my Lord, your
conscience, your guilt accuses you, and would throw the suspicion on me;
but keep your daughter, and think no more of Isabella. The judgments
already fallen on your house forbid me matching into it.”
Manfred, alarmed at the resolute tone in which Frederic delivered these
words, endeavoured to pacify him. Dismissing Bianca, he made such
submissions to the Marquis, and threw in such artful encomiums on
Matilda, that Frederic was once more staggered. However, as his passion
was of so recent a date, it could not at once surmount the scruples he
had conceived. He had gathered enough from Bianca’s discourse to
persuade him that heaven declared itself against Manfred. The proposed
marriages too removed his claim to a distance; and the principality of
Otranto was a stronger temptation than the contingent reversion of it
with Matilda. Still he would not absolutely recede from his engagements;
but purposing to gain time, he demanded of Manfred if it was true in fact
that Hippolita consented to the divorce. The Prince, transported to find
no other obstacle, and depending on his influence over his wife, assured
the Marquis it was so, and that he might satisfy himself of the truth
from her own mouth.
As they were thus discoursing, word was brought that the banquet was
prepared. Manfred conducted Frederic to the great hall, where they were
received by Hippolita and the young Princesses. Manfred placed the
Marquis next to Matilda, and seated himself between his wife and
Isabella. Hippolita comported herself with an easy gravity; but the
young ladies were silent and melancholy. Manfred, who was determined to
pursue his point with the Marquis in the remainder of the evening, pushed
on the feast until it waxed late; affecting unrestrained gaiety, and
plying Frederic with repeated goblets of wine. The latter, more upon his
guard than Manfred wished, declined his frequent challenges, on pretence
of his late loss of blood; while the Prince, to raise his own disordered
spirits, and to counterfeit unconcern, indulged himself in plentiful
draughts, though not to the intoxication of his senses.
The evening being far advanced, the banquet concluded. Manfred would
have withdrawn with Frederic; but the latter pleading weakness and want
of repose, retired to his chamber, gallantly telling the Prince that his
daughter should amuse his Highness until himself could attend him.
Manfred accepted the party, and to the no small grief of Isabella,
accompanied her to her apartment. Matilda waited on her mother to enjoy
the freshness of the evening on the ramparts of the castle.
Soon as the company were dispersed their several ways, Frederic, quitting
his chamber, inquired if Hippolita was alone, and was told by one of her
attendants, who had not noticed her going forth, that at that hour she
generally withdrew to her oratory, where he probably would find her. The
Marquis, during the repast, had beheld Matilda with increase of passion.
He now wished to find Hippolita in the disposition her Lord had promised.
The portents that had alarmed him were forgotten in his desires.
Stealing softly and unobserved to the apartment of Hippolita, he entered
it with a resolution to encourage her acquiescence to the divorce, having
perceived that Manfred was resolved to make the possession of Isabella an
unalterable condition, before he would grant Matilda to his wishes.
The Marquis was not surprised at the silence that reigned in the
Princess’s apartment. Concluding her, as he had been advertised, in her
oratory, he passed on. The door was ajar; the evening gloomy and
overcast. Pushing open the door gently, he saw a person kneeling before
the altar. As he approached nearer, it seemed not a woman, but one in a
long woollen weed, whose back was towards him. The person seemed
absorbed in prayer. The Marquis was about to return, when the figure,
rising, stood some moments fixed in meditation, without regarding him.
The Marquis, expecting the holy person to come forth, and meaning to
excuse his uncivil interruption, said,
“Reverend Father, I sought the Lady Hippolita.”
“Hippolita!” replied a hollow voice; “camest thou to this castle to seek
Hippolita?” and then the figure, turning slowly round, discovered to
Frederic the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton, wrapt in a
hermit’s cowl.
“Angels of grace protect me!” cried Frederic, recoiling.
“Deserve their protection!” said the Spectre. Frederic, falling on his
knees, adjured the phantom to take pity on him.
“Dost thou not remember me?” said the apparition. “Remember the wood of
Joppa!”
“Art thou that holy hermit?” cried Frederic, trembling. “Can I do aught
for thy eternal peace?”
“Wast thou delivered from bondage,” said the spectre, “to pursue carnal
delights? Hast thou forgotten the buried sabre, and the behest of Heaven
engraven on it?”
“I have not, I have not,” said Frederic; “but say, blest spirit, what is
thy errand to me? What remains to be done?”
“To forget Matilda!” said the apparition; and vanished.
Frederic’s blood froze in his veins. For some minutes he remained
motionless. Then falling prostrate on his face before the altar, he
besought the intercession of every saint for pardon. A flood of tears
succeeded to this transport; and the image of the beauteous Matilda
rushing in spite of him on his thoughts, he lay on the ground in a
conflict of penitence and passion. Ere he could recover from this agony
of his spirits, the Princess Hippolita with a taper in her hand entered
the oratory alone. Seeing a man without motion on the floor, she gave a
shriek, concluding him dead. Her fright brought Frederic to himself.
Rising suddenly, his face bedewed with tears, he would have rushed from
her presence; but Hippolita stopping him, conjured him in the most
plaintive accents to explain the cause of his disorder, and by what
strange chance she had found him there in that posture.
“Ah, virtuous Princess!” said the Marquis, penetrated with grief, and
stopped.
“For the love of Heaven, my Lord,” said Hippolita, “disclose the cause of
this transport! What mean these doleful sounds, this alarming
exclamation on my name? What woes has heaven still in store for the
wretched Hippolita? Yet silent! By every pitying angel, I adjure thee,
noble Prince,” continued she, falling at his feet, “to disclose the
purport of what lies at thy heart. I see thou feelest for me; thou
feelest the sharp pangs that thou inflictest—speak, for pity! Does aught
thou knowest concern my child?”
“I cannot speak,” cried Frederic, bursting from her. “Oh, Matilda!”
Quitting the Princess thus abruptly, he hastened to his own apartment.
At the door of it he was accosted by Manfred, who flushed by wine and
love had come to seek him, and to propose to waste some hours of the
night in music and revelling. Frederic, offended at an invitation so
dissonant from the mood of his soul, pushed him rudely aside, and
entering his chamber, flung the door intemperately against Manfred, and
bolted it inwards. The haughty Prince, enraged at this unaccountable
behaviour, withdrew in a frame of mind capable of the most fatal
excesses. As he crossed the court, he was met by the domestic whom he
had planted at the convent as a spy on Jerome and Theodore. This man,
almost breathless with the haste he had made, informed his Lord that
Theodore, and some lady from the castle were, at that instant, in private
conference at the tomb of Alfonso in St. Nicholas’s church. He had
dogged Theodore thither, but the gloominess of the night had prevented
his discovering who the woman was.
Manfred, whose spirits were inflamed, and whom Isabella had driven from
her on his urging his passion with too little reserve, did not doubt but
the inquietude she had expressed had been occasioned by her impatience to
meet Theodore. Provoked by this conjecture, and enraged at her father,
he hastened secretly to the great church. Gliding softly between the
aisles, and guided by an imperfect gleam of moonshine that shone faintly
through the illuminated windows, he stole towards the tomb of Alfonso, to
which he was directed by indistinct whispers of the persons he sought.
The first sounds he could distinguish were—
“Does it, alas! depend on me? Manfred will never permit our union.”
“No, this shall prevent it!” cried the tyrant, drawing his dagger, and
plunging it over her shoulder into the bosom of the person that spoke.
“Ah, me, I am slain!” cried Matilda, sinking. “Good heaven, receive my
soul!”
“Savage, inhuman monster, what hast thou done!” cried Theodore, rushing
on him, and wrenching his dagger from him.
“Stop, stop thy impious hand!” cried Matilda; “it is my father!”
Manfred, waking as from a trance, beat his breast, twisted his hands in
his locks, and endeavoured to recover his dagger from Theodore to
despatch himself. Theodore, scarce less distracted, and only mastering
the transports of his grief to assist Matilda, had now by his cries drawn
some of the monks to his aid. While part of them endeavoured, in concert
with the afflicted Theodore, to stop the blood of the dying Princess, the
rest prevented Manfred from laying violent hands on himself.
Matilda, resigning herself patiently to her fate, acknowledged with looks
of grateful love the zeal of Theodore. Yet oft as her faintness would
permit her speech its way, she begged the assistants to comfort her
father. Jerome, by this time, had learnt the fatal news, and reached the
church. His looks seemed to reproach Theodore, but turning to Manfred,
he said,
“Now, tyrant! behold the completion of woe fulfilled on thy impious and
devoted head! The blood of Alfonso cried to heaven for vengeance; and
heaven has permitted its altar to be polluted by assassination, that thou
mightest shed thy own blood at the foot of that Prince’s sepulchre!”
“Cruel man!” cried Matilda, “to aggravate the woes of a parent; may
heaven bless my father, and forgive him as I do! My Lord, my gracious
Sire, dost thou forgive thy child? Indeed, I came not hither to meet
Theodore. I found him praying at this tomb, whither my mother sent me to
intercede for thee, for her—dearest father, bless your child, and say you
forgive her.”
“Forgive thee! Murderous monster!” cried Manfred, “can assassins
forgive? I took thee for Isabella; but heaven directed my bloody hand to
the heart of my child. Oh, Matilda!—I cannot utter it—canst thou forgive
the blindness of my rage?”