The friar returned the embrace which had set his blood on fire. The luxurious and unbounded excesses of the former night were renewed, and they separated not till the bell rang for matins.
The same pleasures were frequently repeated. The monks rejoiced in the feigned Rosario’s unexpected recovery, and none of them suspected his real sex. The abbot possessed his mistress in tranquillity, and perceiving his frailty unsuspected, abandoned himself to his passions in full security. Shame and remorse no longer tormented him. Frequent repetitions made him familiar with sin, and his bosom became proof against the stings of conscience. In these sentiments he was encouraged by Matilda; but she soon was aware that she had satiated her lover by the unbounded freedom of her caresses. Her charms becoming accustomed to him, they ceased to excite the same desires which at first they had inspired. The delirium of passion being past, he had leisure to observe every trifling defect: where none were to be found, satiety made him fancy them. The monk was glutted with the fullness of pleasure: a week had scarcely elapsed before he was wearied of his paramour: his warm constitution still made him seek in her arms the gratification of his lust: but when the moment of passion was over, he quitted her with disgust, and his humour, naturally inconstant, made him sigh impatiently for variety.
Possession, which cloys man, only increases the affection of woman. Matilda with every succeeding day grew more attached to the friar. Since he had obtained her favours, he was become dearer to her than ever, and she felt grateful to him for the pleasures in which they had equally been sharers. Unfortunately as her passion grew ardent, Ambrosio’s grew cold; the very marks of her fondness excited his disgust, and its excess served to extinguish the flame which already burned but feebly in his bosom. Matilda could not but remark that her society seemed to him daily less agreeable: he was inattentive while she spoke: her musical talents, which she possessed in perfection, had lost the power of amusing him; or if he deigned to praise them, his compliments were evidently forced and cold. He no longer gazed upon her with affection, or applauded her sentiments with a lover’s partiality. This Matilda well perceived, and redoubled her efforts to revive those sentiments which he once had felt. She could not but fail, since he considered as importunities the pains which she took to please him, and was disgusted by the very means which she used to recall the wanderer. Still, however, their illicit commerce continued: but it was clear that he was led to her arms, not by love, but the cravings of brutal appetite. His constitution made a woman necessary to him, and Matilda was the only one with whom he could indulge his passions safely: in spite of her beauty, he gazed upon every other female with more desire; but fearing that his hypocrisy should be made public, he confined his inclinations to his own breast.
It was by no means his nature to be timid: but his education had impressed his mind with fear so strongly, that apprehension was now become part of his character. Had his youth been passed in the world, he would have shown himself possessed of many brilliant and manly qualities. He was naturally enterprising, firm, and fearless: he had a warrior’s heart, and he might have shone with splendour at the head of an army. There was no want of generosity in his nature: the wretched never failed to find in him a compassionate auditor: his abilities were quick and shining, and his judgment, vast, solid, and decisive. With such qualifications he would have been an ornament to his country: that he possessed them, he had given proofs in his earliest infancy, and his parents had beheld his dawning virtues with the fondest delight and admiration. Unfortunately, while yet a child he was deprived of those parents. He fell into the power of a relation whose only wish about him was never to hear of him more; for that purpose he gave him in charge to his friend, the former superior of the Capuchins. The abbot, a very monk, used all his endeavours to persuade the boy that happiness existed not without the walls of a convent. He succeeded fully. To deserve admittance into the order of St. Francis was Ambrosio’s highest ambition. His instructors carefully repressed those virtues whose grandeur and disinterestedness were ill-suited to the cloister. Instead of universal benevolence, he adopted a selfish partiality for his own particular establishment: he was taught to consider compassion for the errors of others as a crime of the blackest dye: the noble frankness of his temper was exchanged for servile humility; and in order to break his natural spirit, the monks terrified his young mind by placing before him all the horrors with which superstition could furnish them: they painted to him the torments of the damned in colours the most dark, terrible, and fantastic, and threatened him at the slightest fault with eternal perdition. No wonder that his imagination constantly dwelling upon these fearful objects should have rendered his character timid and apprehensive. Add to this, that his long absence from the great world, and total unacquaintance with the common dangers of life, made him form of them an idea far more dismal than the reality. While the monks were busied in rooting out his virtues and narrowing his sentiments, they allowed every vice which had fallen to his share to arrive
