He was commanded back to his cell, but first informed that as soon as he had gained strength sufficient, he must prepare himself for a second examination. The inquisitors hoped that he would then be less hardened and obstinate. To Matilda it was announced that she must expiate her crime in fire on the approaching auto da fé. All her tears and entreaties could procure no mitigation of her doom, and she was dragged by force from the hall of trial.
Returned to his dungeon, the sufferings of Ambrosio’s body were far more supportable than those of his mind. His dislocated limbs, the nails torn from his hands and feet, and his fingers mashed and broken by the pressure of screws, were far surpassed in anguish by the agitation of his soul and vehemence of his terrors. He saw that, guilty or innocent, his judges were bent upon condemning him: the remembrance of what his denial had already cost him terrified him at the idea of being again applied to the question, and almost engaged him to confess his crimes. Then again the consequences of his confession flashed before him, and rendered him once more irresolute. His death would be inevitable, and that a death the most dreadful: he had listened to Matilda’s doom, and doubted not that a similar was reserved for him. He shuddered at the approaching auto da fé, at the idea of perishing in flames, and only escaping from endurable torments to pass into others more subtle and everlasting! With affright did he bend his mind’s eye on the space beyond the grave; nor could hide from himself how justly he ought to dread heaven’s vengeance. In this labyrinth of terrors, fain would he have taken his refuge in the gloom of atheism: fain would he have denied the soul’s immortality; have persuaded himself that when his eyes once closed, they would never more open, and that the same moment would annihilate his soul and body. Even this resource was refused to him. To permit his being blind to the fallacy of this belief, his knowledge was too extensive, his understanding too solid and just. He could not help feeling the existence of a God. Those truths, once his comfort, now presented themselves before him in the clearest light; but they only served to drive him to distraction. They destroyed his ill-grounded hopes of escaping punishment; and dispelled by the irresistible brightness of truth and convinction, philosophy’s deceitful vapours faded away like a dream.
In anguish almost too great for mortal frame to bear, he expected the time when he was again to be examined. He busied himself in planning ineffectual schemes for escaping both present and future punishment. Of the first there was no possibility; of the second despair made him neglect the only means. While reason forced him to acknowledge a God’s existence, conscience made him doubt the infinity of his goodness. He disbelieved that a sinner like him could find mercy. He had not been deceived into error: ignorance could furnish him with no excuse. He had seen vice in her true colours; before he committed his crimes, he had computed every scruple of their weight; and yet he had committed them.
“Pardon?” he would cry in an excess of frenzy; “Oh! there can be none for me!”
Persuaded of this, instead of humbling himself in penitence, of deploring his guilt, and employing his few remaining hours in deprecating heaven’s wrath, he abandoned himself to the transports of desperate rage; he sorrowed for the punishment of his crimes, not their commission; and exhaled his bosom’s anguish in idle sighs, in vain lamentations, in blasphemy and despair. As the few beams of day which pierced through the bars of his prison window gradually disappeared, and their place was supplied by the pale and glimmering lamp, he felt his terrors redouble, and his ideas become more gloomy, more solemn, more despondent. He dreaded the approach of sleep: no sooner did his eyes close, wearied with tears and watching, than the dreadful visions seemed to be realised on which his mind had dwelt during the day. He found himself in sulphurous realms and burning caverns, surrounded by fiends appointed his tormentors, and who drove him through a variety of tortures, each of which was more dreadful than the former. Amidst these dismal scenes wandered the ghosts of Elvira and her daughter. They reproached him with their deaths, recounted his crimes to the daemons, and urged them to inflict torments of cruelty yet more refined. Such were the pictures which floated before his eyes in sleep: they vanished not till his repose was disturbed by excess of agony. Then would he start from the ground on which he had stretched himself, his brows running down with cold sweat, his eyes wild and frenzied; and he only exchanged the terrible certainty for surmises scarcely more supportable. He paced his dungeon with disordered steps; he gazed with terror upon the surrounding darkness, and often did he cry,
“Oh! fearful is night to the guilty!”
The day of his second examination was at hand. He had been compelled to swallow cordials, whose virtues were calculated to restore his bodily strength, and enable him to support the question longer. On the night preceding this dreaded day, his fears for the morrow permitted him not to sleep. His terrors were so violent, as nearly to annihilate his mental powers. He sat like one stupefied near the table on which his lamp was burning dimly. Despair chained up his faculties in idiotism, and he remained for some hours, unable to speak or move, or indeed to think.
“Look up, Ambrosio!” said a voice in accents well-known to him—
The monk started, and raised his melancholy eyes. Matilda stood before him. She had quitted her religious habit. She now wore a
