The Mysteries of Udolpho
request renewed all the terror which Emily had suffered on the
preceding evening; but, though scarcely able to support herself, under
the sudden shock it gave her, she tried to conceal her apprehensions
from St. Aubert, and gave her trembling arm to assist him to the door
of his chamber.
When he was once more in bed, he desired that Emily, who was then
weeping in her own room, might be called; and, as she came, he waved
his hand for every other person to quit the apartment. When they were
alone, he held out his hand to her, and fixed his eyes upon her
countenance, with an expression so full of tenderness and grief, that
all her fortitude forsook her, and she burst into an agony of tears.
St. Aubert seemed struggling to acquire firmness, but was still unable
to speak; he could only press her hand, and check the tears that stood
trembling in his eyes. At length he commanded his voice, “My dear
child,” said he, trying to smile through his anguish, “my dear
Emily!”—and paused again. He raised his eyes to heaven, as if in
prayer, and then, in a firmer tone, and with a look, in which the
tenderness of the father was dignified by the pious solemnity of the
saint, he said, “My dear child, I would soften the painful truth I have
to tell you, but I find myself quite unequal to the art. Alas! I would,
at this moment, conceal it from you, but that it would be most cruel to
deceive you. It cannot be long before we must part; let us talk of it,
that our thoughts and our prayers may prepare us to bear it.” His voice
faltered, while Emily, still weeping, pressed his hand close to her
heart, which swelled with a convulsive sigh, but she could not look up.
“Let me not waste these moments,” said St. Aubert, recovering himself,
“I have much to say. There is a circumstance of solemn consequence,
which I have to mention, and a solemn promise to obtain from you; when
this is done I shall be easier. You have observed, my dear, how anxious
I am to reach home, but know not all my reasons for this. Listen to
what I am going to say.—Yet stay—before I say more give me this
promise, a promise made to your dying father!”—St. Aubert was
interrupted; Emily, struck by his last words, as if for the first time,
with a conviction of his immediate danger, raised her head; her tears
stopped, and, gazing at him for a moment with an expression of
unutterable anguish, a slight convulsion seized her, and she sunk
senseless in her chair. St. Aubert’s cries brought La Voisin and his
daughter to the room, and they administered every means in their power
to restore her, but, for a considerable time, without effect. When she
recovered, St. Aubert was so exhausted by the scene he had witnessed,
that it was many minutes before he had strength to speak; he was,
however, somewhat revived by a cordial, which Emily gave him; and,
being again alone with her, he exerted himself to tranquilize her
spirits, and to offer her all the comfort of which her situation
admitted. She threw herself into his arms, wept on his neck, and grief
made her so insensible to all he said, that he ceased to offer the
alleviations, which he himself could not, at this moment, feel, and
mingled his silent tears with hers. Recalled, at length, to a sense of
duty, she tried to spare her father from a farther view of her
suffering; and, quitting his embrace, dried her tears, and said
something, which she meant for consolation. “My dear Emily,” replied
St. Aubert, “my dear child, we must look up with humble confidence to
that Being, who has protected and comforted us in every danger, and in
every affliction we have known; to whose eye every moment of our lives
has been exposed; he will not, he does not, forsake us now; I feel his
consolations in my heart. I shall leave you, my child, still in his
care; and, though I depart from this world, I shall be still in his
presence. Nay, weep not again, my Emily. In death there is nothing new,
or surprising, since we all know, that we are born to die; and nothing
terrible to those, who can confide in an all-powerful God. Had my life
been spared now, after a very few years, in the course of nature, I
must have resigned it; old age, with all its train of infirmity, its
privations and its sorrows, would have been mine; and then, at last,
death would have come, and called forth the tears you now shed. Rather,
my child, rejoice, that I am saved from such suffering, and that I am
permitted to die with a mind unimpaired, and sensible of the comforts
of faith and resignation.” St. Aubert paused, fatigued with speaking.
Emily again endeavoured to assume an air of composure; and, in replying
to what he had said, tried to sooth him with a belief, that he had not
spoken in vain.
When he had reposed a while, he resumed the conversation. “Let me
return,” said he, “to a subject, which is very near my heart. I said I
had a solemn promise to receive from you; let me receive it now, before
I explain the chief circumstance which it concerns; there are others,
of which your peace requires that you should rest in ignorance.
Promise, then, that you will perform exactly what I shall enjoin.”
Emily, awed by the earnest solemnity of his manner, dried her tears,
that had begun again to flow, in spite of her efforts to suppress them;
and, looking eloquently at St. Aubert, bound herself to do whatever he
should require by a vow, at which she shuddered, yet knew not why.
He proceeded: “I know you too well, my Emily, to believe, that you
would break any promise, much less one thus solemnly given; your
assurance gives me peace, and the observance of it is of the utmost
importance to your tranquillity. Hear, then, what I am going to tell
you. The closet, which adjoins my chamber at La Vallée, has a sliding
board in the floor. You will know it by a remarkable knot in the wood,
and by its being the next board, except one, to the wainscot, which
fronts the door. At the distance of about a yard from that end, nearer
the window, you will perceive a line across it, as if the plank had
been joined;—the way to open it is this:—Press your foot upon the line;
the end of the board will then sink, and you may slide it with ease
beneath the other. Below, you will see a hollow place.” St. Aubert
paused for breath, and Emily sat fixed in deep attention. “Do you
understand these directions, my dear?” said he. Emily, though scarcely
able to speak, assured him that she did.
“When you return home, then,” he added with a deep sigh—
At the mention of her return home, all the melancholy circumstances,
that must attend this return, rushed upon her fancy; she burst into
convulsive grief, and St. Aubert himself, affected beyond the
resistance of the fortitude which he had, at first, summoned, wept with
her. After some moments, he composed himself. “My dear child,” said he,
“be comforted. When I am gone, you will not be forsaken—I leave you
only in the more immediate care of that Providence, which has never yet
forsaken me. Do not afflict me with this excess of grief; rather teach
me by your example to bear my own.” He stopped again, and Emily, the
more she endeavoured to restrain her emotion, found it the less
possible to do so.
St. Aubert, who now spoke with pain, resumed the subject. “That closet,
my dear,—when you return home, go to it; and, beneath the board I have
described, you will find a packet of written papers. Attend to me now,
for the promise you have given particularly relates to what I shall
direct. These papers you must burn—and, solemnly I command you,
_without examining them_.”
Emily’s surprise, for a moment, overcame her grief, and she ventured to
ask, why this must be? St. Aubert replied, that, if it had been right
for him to explain his reasons, her late promise would have been
unnecessarily exacted. “It is sufficient for you, my love, to have a
deep sense of the importance of observing me in this instance.” St.
Aubert proceeded. “Under that board you will also find about two
hundred louis d’ors, wrapped in a silk purse; indeed, it was to secure
whatever money might be in the château, that this secret place was
contrived, at a time when the province was over-run by troops of men,
who took advantage of the tumults, and became plunderers.
“But I have yet another promise to receive from you, which is—that you
will never, whatever may be your future circumstances, _sell_ the
château.” St. Aubert even enjoined her, whenever she might marry, to
make it an article in the contract, that the château should always be
hers. He then gave her a more minute account of his present
circumstances than he had yet done, adding, “The two hundred louis,
with what money you will now find in my purse, is all the ready money I
have to leave you. I have told you how I am circumstanced with M.
Motteville, at Paris. Ah, my child! I leave you poor—but not
destitute,” he added, after a long pause. Emily could make no reply to
anything he now said, but knelt at the bedside, with her face upon the
quilt, weeping over the hand she held there.
After this conversation, the mind of St. Aubert appeared to be much
more at ease; but, exhausted by the effort of speaking, he sunk into a
kind of doze, and Emily continued to watch and weep beside him, till a
gentle tap at the chamber-door roused her. It was La Voisin, come to
say, that a confessor from the neighbouring convent was below, ready to
attend St. Aubert. Emily would not suffer her father to be disturbed,
but desired, that the priest might not leave the cottage. When St.
Aubert awoke from this doze, his senses were confused, and it was some
moments before he recovered them sufficiently to know, that it was
Emily who sat beside him. He then moved his lips, and stretched forth
his hand to her; as she received which, she sunk back in her chair,
overcome by the impression of death on his countenance. In a few
minutes he recovered his voice, and Emily then asked, if he wished to
see the confessor; he replied, that he did; and, when the holy father
appeared, she withdrew. They remained alone together above half an
hour; when Emily was called in, she found St. Aubert more agitated than
when she had left him, and she gazed, with a slight degree of
resentment, at the friar, as the cause of this; who, however, looked
mildly and mournfully at her, and turned away. St. Aubert, in a
tremulous voice, said, he wished her to join in prayer with him, and
asked if La Voisin would do so too. The old man and his daughter came;
they both wept, and knelt with Emily round the bed, while the holy
father read in a solemn voice the service for the dying. St. Aubert lay
with a serene countenance, and seemed to join fervently in the
devotion, while tears often stole from beneath his closed eyelids, and
Emily’s sobs more than once interrupted the service.
When it was concluded, and extreme unction had been administered, the
friar withdrew. St. Aubert then made a sign for La Voisin to come
nearer. He gave him his hand, and was, for a moment, silent. At length,
he said, in a trembling voice, “My good friend, our acquaintance has
been short, but long enough to give you an opportunity of showing me
much kind attention. I cannot doubt, that you will extend this kindness
to my daughter, when I am gone; she will have need of it. I entrust her
to your care during the few days she will remain here. I need say no
more—you know the feelings of a father, for you have children; mine
would be, indeed, severe if I had less confidence in you.” He paused.
La Voisin assured him, and his tears bore testimony to his sincerity,
that he would do all he could to soften her affliction, and that, if
St. Aubert wished it, he would even attend her into Gascony; an offer
so pleasing to St. Aubert, that he had scarcely words to acknowledge