Introduction

Hor­ace Wal­pole was the young­est son of Sir Robert Wal­pole, the great states­man, who died Earl of Or­ford.  He was born in 1717, the year in which his father resigned of­fice, re­main­ing in op­pos­i­tion for al­most three years be­fore his re­turn to a long ten­ure of power.  Hor­ace Wal­pole was edu­cated at Eton, where he formed a school friend­ship with Tho­mas Gray, who was but a few months older.  In 1739 Gray was trav­el­ling-com­pan­ion with Wal­pole in France and Italy un­til they differed and par­ted; but the friend­ship was af­ter­wards re­newed, and re­mained firm to the end.  Hor­ace Wal­pole went from Eton to King’s Col­lege, Cam­bridge, and entered Parlia­ment in 1741, the year be­fore his father’s fi­nal resig­na­tion and ac­cept­ance of an earl­dom.  His way of life was made easy to him.  As Usher of the Ex­chequer, Comp­troller of the Pipe, and Clerk of the Estreats in the Ex­chequer, he re­ceived nearly two thou­sand a year for do­ing noth­ing, lived with his father, and amused him­self.

Hor­ace Wal­pole idled, and amused him­self with the small life of the fash­ion­able world to which he was proud of be­long­ing, though he had a quick eye for its van­it­ies.  He had so­cial wit, and liked to put it to small uses.  But he was not an empty idler, and there were sea­sons when he could be­come a sharp judge of him­self.  “I am sens­ible,” he wrote to his most in­tim­ate friend, “I am sens­ible of hav­ing more fol­lies and weak­nesses and fewer real good qual­it­ies than most men.  I some­times re­flect on this, though, I own, too sel­dom.  I al­ways want to be­gin act­ing like a man, and a sens­ible one, which I think I might be if I would.”  He had deep home af­fec­tions, and, un­der many po­lite af­fect­a­tions, plenty of good sense.

Hor­ace Wal­pole’s father died in 1745.  The eld­est son, who suc­ceeded to the earl­dom, died in 1751, and left a son, Ge­orge, who was for a time in­sane, and lived un­til 1791.  As Ge­orge left no child, the title and es­tates passed to Hor­ace Wal­pole, then sev­enty-four years old, and the only uncle who sur­vived.  Hor­ace Wal­pole thus be­came Earl of Or­ford, dur­ing the last six years of his life.  As to the title, he said that he felt him­self be­ing called names in his old age.  He died un­mar­ried, in the year 1797, at the age of eighty.

He had turned his house at Straw­berry Hill, by the Thames, near Twick­en­ham, into a Gothic villa—eight­eenth-cen­tury Gothic—and amused him­self by spend­ing freely upon its ad­orn­ment with such things as were then fash­ion­able as ob­jects of taste.  But he de­lighted also in his flowers and his trel­lises of roses, and the quiet Thames.  When con­fined by gout to his Lon­don house in Ar­ling­ton Street, flowers from Straw­berry Hill and a bird were ne­ces­sary con­sol­a­tions.  He set up also at Straw­berry Hill a private print­ing press, at which he prin­ted his friend Gray’s poems, also in 1758 his own Cata­logue of the Royal and Noble Authors of Eng­land, and five volumes of Anec­dotes of Paint­ing in Eng­land, between 1762 and 1771.

Hor­ace Wal­pole pro­duced The Castle of Otranto in 1765, at the ma­ture age of forty-eight.  It was sug­ges­ted by a dream from which he said he waked one morn­ing, and of which “all I could re­cover was, that I had thought my­self in an an­cient castle (a very nat­ural dream for a head like mine, filled with Gothic story), and that on the up­per­most ban­is­ter of a great stair­case I saw a gi­gantic hand in ar­mour.  In the even­ing I sat down and began to write, without know­ing in the least what I in­ten­ded to say or re­late.”  So began the tale which pro­fessed to be trans­lated by “Wil­liam Mar­shal, gen­tle­man, from the Italian of Onu­phro Mur­alto, canon of the Church of St. Nich­olas, at Otranto.”  It was writ­ten in two months.  Wal­pole’s friend Gray re­por­ted to him that at Cam­bridge the book made “some of them cry a little, and all in gen­eral afraid to go to bed o’ nights.”  The Castle of Otranto was, in its own way, an early sign of the re­ac­tion to­wards ro­mance in the lat­ter part of the last cen­tury.  This gives it in­terest.  But it has had many fol­low­ers, and the hardy mod­ern reader, when he read’s Gray’s note from Cam­bridge, needs to be re­minded of its date.

Henry Mor­ley

Preface to the First Edition

The fol­low­ing work was found in the lib­rary of an an­cient Cath­olic fam­ily in the north of Eng­land.  It was prin­ted at Naples, in the black let­ter, in the year 1529.  How much sooner it was writ­ten does not ap­pear.  The prin­cipal in­cid­ents are such as were be­lieved in the darkest ages of Chris­tian­ity; but the lan­guage and con­duct have noth­ing that sa­vours of bar­bar­ism.  The style is the purest Italian.

If the story was writ­ten near the time when it is sup­posed to have happened, it must have been between 1095, the era of the first Cru­sade, and 1243, the date of the last, or not long af­ter­wards.  There is no other cir­cum­stance in the work that can lead us to guess at the period in which the scene is laid: the names of the act­ors are evid­ently fic­ti­tious, and prob­ably dis­guised on pur­pose: yet the Span­ish names of the do­mest­ics seem to in­dic­ate that this work was not com­posed un­til the es­tab­lish­ment of the Ar­rago­nian Kings in Naples had made Span­ish ap­pel­la­tions fa­mil­iar in that coun­try.  The beauty of the dic­tion, and the zeal of the au­thor (mod­er­ated, how­ever, by sin­gu­lar judg­ment) con­cur to make me think that the date of the com­pos­i­tion was little ante­cedent to that of the im­pres­sion.  Let­ters were then in their most flour­ish­ing state in Italy, and con­trib­uted to dis­pel the em­pire of su­per­sti­tion, at that time so for­cibly at­tacked by the re­formers.  It is not un­likely that an art­ful priest might en­deav­our to turn their own arms on the in­nov­at­ors, and might avail him­self of his abil­it­ies as an au­thor to con­firm the popu­lace in their an­cient er­rors and su­per­sti­tions.  If this was his view, he has cer­tainly ac­ted with sig­nal ad­dress.  Such a work as the fol­low­ing would en­slave a hun­dred vul­gar minds bey­ond half the books of con­tro­versy that have been writ­ten from the days of Luther to the present hour.

This solu­tion of the au­thor’s motives is, how­ever, offered as a mere con­jec­ture.  Whatever his views were, or whatever ef­fects the ex­e­cu­tion of them might have, his work can only be laid be­fore the pub­lic at present as a mat­ter of en­ter­tain­ment.  Even as such, some apo­logy for it is ne­ces­sary.  Mir­acles, vis­ions, nec­ro­mancy, dreams, and other preter­nat­ural events, are ex­ploded now even from ro­mances.  That was not the case when our au­thor wrote; much less when the story it­self is sup­posed to have happened.  Be­lief in every kind of prodigy was so es­tab­lished in those dark ages, that an au­thor would not be faith­ful to the man­ners of the times, who should omit all men­tion of them.  He is not bound to be­lieve them him­self, but he must rep­res­ent his act­ors as be­liev­ing them.

If this air of the mi­ra­cu­lous is ex­cused, the reader will find noth­ing else un­worthy of his per­usal.  Al­low the pos­sib­il­ity of the facts, and all the act­ors com­port them­selves as per­sons would do in their situ­ation.  There is no bom­bast, no similes, flowers, di­gres­sions, or un­ne­ces­sary de­scrip­tions.  Everything tends dir­ectly to the cata­strophe.  Never is the reader’s at­ten­tion re­laxed.  The rules of the drama are al­most ob­served through­out the con­duct of the piece.  The char­ac­ters are well drawn, and still bet­ter main­tained.  Ter­ror, the au­thor’s prin­cipal en­gine, pre­vents the story from ever lan­guish­ing; and it is so of­ten con­tras­ted by pity, that the mind is kept up in a con­stant vi­cis­situde of in­ter­est­ing pas­sions.

Some per­sons may per­haps think the char­ac­ters of the do­mest­ics too little ser­i­ous for the gen­eral cast of the story; but be­sides their op­pos­i­tion to the prin­cipal per­son­ages, the art of the au­thor is very ob­serv­able in his con­duct of the sub­al­terns.  They dis­cover many pas­sages es­sen­tial to the story, which could not be well brought to light but by their na­iv­ete and sim­pli­city.  In par­tic­u­lar, the wo­man­ish ter­ror and foibles of Bi­anca, in the last chapter, con­duce es­sen­tially to­wards ad­van­cing the cata­strophe.

It is nat­ural for a trans­lator to be pre­ju­diced in fa­vour of his ad­op­ted work.  More im­par­tial read­ers may not be so much struck with the beau­ties of this piece as I was.  Yet I am not blind to my au­thor’s de­fects.  I could wish he had groun­ded his plan on a more use­ful moral than this: that “the sins of fath­ers are vis­ited on their chil­dren to the third and fourth gen­er­a­tion.”  I doubt whether, in his time, any more than at present, am­bi­tion curbed its ap­pet­ite of domin­ion from the dread of so re­mote a pun­ish­ment.  And yet this moral is weakened by that less dir­ect in­sinu­ation, that even such ana­thema may be di­ver­ted by de­vo­tion to St. Nich­olas.  Here the in­terest of the monk plainly gets the bet­ter of the judg­ment of the au­thor.  However, with all its faults, I have no doubt but the Eng­lish reader will be pleased with a sight of this per­form­ance.  The piety that reigns through­out, the les­sons of vir­tue that are in­cul­cated, and the ri­gid pur­ity of the sen­ti­ments, ex­empt this work from the cen­sure to which ro­mances are but too li­able.  Should it meet with the suc­cess I hope for, I may be en­cour­aged to re­print the ori­ginal Italian, though it will tend to de­pre­ci­ate my own la­bour.  Our lan­guage falls far short of the charms of the Italian, both for vari­ety and har­mony.  The lat­ter is pe­cu­li­arly ex­cel­lent for simple nar­rat­ive.  It is dif­fi­cult in Eng­lish to re­late without fall­ing too low or rising too high; a fault ob­vi­ously oc­ca­sioned by the little care taken to speak pure lan­guage in com­mon con­ver­sa­tion.  Every Italian or French­man of any rank piques him­self on speak­ing his own tongue cor­rectly and with choice.  I can­not flat­ter my­self with hav­ing done justice to my au­thor in this re­spect: his style is as el­eg­ant as his con­duct of the pas­sions is mas­terly.  It is a pity that he did not ap­ply his tal­ents to what they were evid­ently proper for—the theatre.

I will de­tain the reader no longer, but to make one short re­mark.  Though the ma­chinery is in­ven­tion, and the names of the act­ors ima­gin­ary, I can­not but be­lieve that the ground­work of the story is foun­ded on truth.  The scene is un­doubtedly laid in some real castle.  The au­thor seems fre­quently, without design, to de­scribe par­tic­u­lar parts.  “The cham­ber,” says he, “on the right hand;” “the door on the left hand;” “the dis­tance from the chapel to Con­rad’s apart­ment:” these and other pas­sages are strong pre­sump­tions that the au­thor had some cer­tain build­ing in his eye.  Curi­ous per­sons, who have leis­ure to em­ploy in such re­searches, may pos­sibly dis­cover in the Italian writers the found­a­tion on which our au­thor has built.  If a cata­strophe, at all re­sem­bling that which he de­scribes, is be­lieved to have given rise to this work, it will con­trib­ute to in­terest the reader, and will make The Castle of Otranto a still more mov­ing story.

Sonnet to the Right Honourable Lady Mary Coke

The gentle maid, whose hap­less tale
These mel­an­choly pages speak;
Say, gra­cious lady, shall she fail
To draw the tear adown thy cheek?

No; never was thy pity­ing breast
In­sens­ible to hu­man woes;
Tender, tho’ firm, it melts dis­trest
For weak­nesses it never knows.

Oh! guard the mar­vels I re­late
Of fell am­bi­tion scourg’d by fate,
From reason’s peev­ish blame.
Blest with thy smile, my daunt­less sail
I dare ex­pand to Fancy’s gale,
For sure thy smiles are Fame.

H. W.

The Castle of Otranto A Story, Translated by William Marshal, Gentleman, From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto

I

Man­fred, Prince of Otranto, had one son and one daugh­ter: the lat­ter, a most beau­ti­ful vir­gin, aged eight­een, was called Mat­ilda.  Con­rad, the son, was three years younger, a homely youth, sickly, and of no prom­ising dis­pos­i­tion; yet he was the darling of his father, who never showed any symp­toms of af­fec­tion to Mat­ilda.  Man­fred had con­trac­ted a mar­riage for his son with the Mar­quis of Vi­cenza’s daugh­ter, Isa­bella; and she had already been de­livered by her guard­i­ans into the hands of Man­fred, that he might cel­eb­rate the wed­ding as soon as Con­rad’s in­firm state of health would per­mit.

Man­fred’s im­pa­tience for this ce­re­mo­nial was re­marked by his fam­ily and neigh­bours.  The former, in­deed, ap­pre­hend­ing the sever­ity of their Prince’s dis­pos­i­tion, did not dare to ut­ter their sur­mises on this pre­cip­it­a­tion.  Hip­pol­ita, his wife, an ami­able lady, did some­times ven­ture to rep­res­ent the danger of mar­ry­ing their only son so early, con­sid­er­ing his great youth, and greater in­firm­it­ies; but she never re­ceived any other an­swer than re­flec­tions on her own ster­il­ity, who had given him but one heir.  His ten­ants and sub­jects were less cau­tious in their dis­courses.  They at­trib­uted this hasty wed­ding to the Prince’s dread of see­ing ac­com­plished an an­cient proph­ecy, which was said to have pro­nounced that the castle and lord­ship of Otranto “should pass from the present fam­ily, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to in­habit it.”  It was dif­fi­cult to make any sense of this proph­ecy; and still less easy to con­ceive what it had to do with the mar­riage in ques­tion.  Yet these mys­ter­ies, or con­tra­dic­tions, did not make the popu­lace ad­here the less to their opin­ion.

Young Con­rad’s birth­day was fixed for his es­pous­als.  The com­pany was as­sembled in the chapel of the Castle, and everything ready for be­gin­ning the di­vine of­fice, when Con­rad him­self was miss­ing.  Man­fred, im­pa­tient of the least delay, and who had not ob­served his son re­tire, des­patched one of his at­tend­ants to sum­mon the young Prince.  The ser­vant, who had not stayed long enough to have crossed the court to Con­rad’s apart­ment, came run­ning back breath­less, in a frantic man­ner, his eyes star­ing, and foam­ing at the mouth.  He said noth­ing, but poin­ted to the court.

The com­pany were struck with ter­ror and amazement.  The Prin­cess Hip­pol­ita, without know­ing what was the mat­ter, but anxious for her son, swooned away.  Man­fred, less ap­pre­hens­ive than en­raged at the pro­cras­tin­a­tion of the nup­tials, and at the folly of his do­mestic, asked im­per­i­ously what was the mat­ter?  The fel­low made no an­swer, but con­tin­ued point­ing to­wards the court­yard; and at last, after re­peated ques­tions put to him, cried out, “Oh! the hel­met! the hel­met!”

In the mean­time, some of the com­pany had run into the court, from whence was heard a con­fused noise of shrieks, hor­ror, and sur­prise.  Man­fred, who began to be alarmed at not see­ing his son, went him­self to get in­form­a­tion of what oc­ca­sioned this strange con­fu­sion.  Mat­ilda re­mained en­deav­our­ing to as­sist her mother, and Isa­bella stayed for the same pur­pose, and to avoid show­ing any im­pa­tience for the bride­groom, for whom, in truth, she had con­ceived little af­fec­tion.

The first thing that struck Man­fred’s eyes was a group of his ser­vants en­deav­our­ing to raise some­thing that ap­peared to him a moun­tain of sable plumes.  He gazed without be­liev­ing his sight.

“What are ye do­ing?” cried Man­fred, wrath­fully; “where is my son?”

A vol­ley of voices replied, “Oh! my Lord! the Prince! the Prince! the hel­met! the hel­met!”

Shocked with these lam­ent­able sounds, and dread­ing he knew not what, he ad­vanced hast­ily—but what a sight for a father’s eyes!—he be­held his child dashed to pieces, and al­most bur­ied un­der an enorm­ous hel­met, an hun­dred times more large than any casque ever made for hu­man be­ing, and shaded with a pro­por­tion­able quant­ity of black feath­ers.

The hor­ror of the spec­tacle, the ig­nor­ance of all around how this mis­for­tune had happened, and above all, the tre­mend­ous phe­nomenon be­fore him, took away the Prince’s speech.  Yet his si­lence las­ted longer than even grief could oc­ca­sion.  He fixed his eyes on what he wished in vain to be­lieve a vis­ion; and seemed less at­tent­ive to his loss, than bur­ied in med­it­a­tion on the stu­pendous ob­ject that had oc­ca­sioned it.  He touched, he ex­amined the fatal casque; nor could even the bleed­ing mangled re­mains of the young Prince di­vert the eyes of Man­fred from the portent be­fore him.

All who had known his par­tial fond­ness for young Con­rad, were as much sur­prised at their Prince’s in­sens­ib­il­ity, as thun­der­struck them­selves at the mir­acle of the hel­met.  They con­veyed the dis­figured corpse into the hall, without re­ceiv­ing the least dir­ec­tion from Man­fred.  As little was he at­tent­ive to the ladies who re­mained in the chapel.  On the con­trary, without men­tion­ing the un­happy prin­cesses, his wife and daugh­ter, the first sounds that dropped from Man­fred’s lips were, “Take care of the Lady Isa­bella.”

The do­mest­ics, without ob­serving the sin­gu­lar­ity of this dir­ec­tion, were guided by their af­fec­tion to their mis­tress, to con­sider it as pe­cu­li­arly ad­dressed to her situ­ation, and flew to her as­sist­ance.  They con­veyed her to her cham­ber more dead than alive, and in­dif­fer­ent to all the strange cir­cum­stances she heard, ex­cept the death of her son.

Mat­ilda, who doted on her mother, smothered her own grief and amazement, and thought of noth­ing but as­sist­ing and com­fort­ing her af­flic­ted par­ent.  Isa­bella, who had been treated by Hip­pol­ita like a daugh­ter, and who re­turned that ten­der­ness with equal duty and af­fec­tion, was scarce less as­sidu­ous about the Prin­cess; at the same time en­deav­our­ing to par­take and lessen the weight of sor­row which she saw Mat­ilda strove to sup­press, for whom she had con­ceived the warmest sym­pathy of friend­ship.  Yet her own situ­ation could not help find­ing its place in her thoughts.  She felt no con­cern for the death of young Con­rad, ex­cept com­mis­er­a­tion; and she was not sorry to be de­livered from a mar­riage which had prom­ised her little fe­li­city, either from her destined bride­groom, or from the severe tem­per of Man­fred, who, though he had dis­tin­guished her by great in­dul­gence, had im­prin­ted her mind with ter­ror, from his cause­less rigour to such ami­able prin­cesses as Hip­pol­ita and Mat­ilda.

While the ladies were con­vey­ing the wretched mother to her bed, Man­fred re­mained in the court, gaz­ing on the omin­ous casque, and re­gard­less of the crowd which the strange­ness of the event had now as­sembled around him.  The few words he ar­tic­u­lated, ten­ded solely to in­quir­ies, whether any man knew from whence it could have come?  Nobody could give him the least in­form­a­tion.  However, as it seemed to be the sole ob­ject of his curi­os­ity, it soon be­came so to the rest of the spec­tat­ors, whose con­jec­tures were as ab­surd and im­prob­able, as the cata­strophe it­self was un­pre­ced­en­ted.  In the midst of their sense­less guesses, a young peas­ant, whom ru­mour had drawn thither from a neigh­bour­ing vil­lage, ob­served that the mi­ra­cu­lous hel­met was ex­actly like that on the fig­ure in black marble of Alf­onso the Good, one of their former princes, in the church of St. Nich­olas.

“Vil­lain!  What say­est thou?” cried Man­fred, start­ing from his trance in a tem­pest of rage, and seiz­ing the young man by the col­lar; “how darest thou ut­ter such treason?  Thy life shall pay for it.”

The spec­tat­ors, who as little com­pre­hen­ded the cause of the Prince’s fury as all the rest they had seen, were at a loss to un­ravel this new cir­cum­stance.  The young peas­ant him­self was still more as­ton­ished, not con­ceiv­ing how he had of­fen­ded the Prince.  Yet re­col­lect­ing him­self, with a mix­ture of grace and hu­mil­ity, he dis­en­gaged him­self from Man­fred’s grip, and then with an obeis­ance, which dis­covered more jeal­ousy of in­no­cence than dis­may, he asked, with re­spect, of what he was guilty?  Man­fred, more en­raged at the vigour, how­ever de­cently ex­er­ted, with which the young man had shaken off his hold, than ap­peased by his sub­mis­sion, ordered his at­tend­ants to seize him, and, if he had not been with­held by his friends whom he had in­vited to the nup­tials, would have poignarded the peas­ant in their arms.

Dur­ing this al­ter­ca­tion, some of the vul­gar spec­tat­ors had run to the great church, which stood near the castle, and came back open-mouthed, de­clar­ing that the hel­met was miss­ing from Alf­onso’s statue.  Man­fred, at this news, grew per­fectly frantic; and, as if he sought a sub­ject on which to vent the tem­pest within him, he rushed again on the young peas­ant, cry­ing—

“Vil­lain! Mon­ster! Sor­cerer! ’tis thou hast done this! ’tis thou hast slain my son!”

The mob, who wanted some ob­ject within the scope of their ca­pa­cit­ies, on whom they might dis­charge their be­wildered reas­on­ing, caught the words from the mouth of their lord, and reechoed—

“Ay, ay; ’tis he, ’tis he: he has stolen the hel­met from good Alf­onso’s tomb, and dashed out the brains of our young Prince with it,” never re­flect­ing how enorm­ous the dis­pro­por­tion was between the marble hel­met that had been in the church, and that of steel be­fore their eyes; nor how im­possible it was for a youth seem­ingly not twenty, to wield a piece of ar­mour of so prodi­gious a weight.

The folly of these ejac­u­la­tions brought Man­fred to him­self: yet whether pro­voked at the peas­ant hav­ing ob­served the re­semb­lance between the two hel­mets, and thereby led to the farther dis­cov­ery of the ab­sence of that in the church, or wish­ing to bury any such ru­mour un­der so im­per­tin­ent a sup­pos­i­tion, he gravely pro­nounced that the young man was cer­tainly a nec­ro­man­cer, and that till the Church could take cog­nis­ance of the af­fair, he would have the Ma­gi­cian, whom they had thus de­tec­ted, kept pris­oner un­der the hel­met it­self, which he ordered his at­tend­ants to raise, and place the young man un­der it; de­clar­ing he should be kept there without food, with which his own in­fernal art might fur­nish him.

It was in vain for the youth to rep­res­ent against this pre­pos­ter­ous sen­tence: in vain did Man­fred’s friends en­deav­our to di­vert him from this sav­age and ill-groun­ded res­ol­u­tion.  The gen­er­al­ity were charmed with their lord’s de­cision, which, to their ap­pre­hen­sions, car­ried great ap­pear­ance of justice, as the Ma­gi­cian was to be pun­ished by the very in­stru­ment with which he had of­fen­ded: nor were they struck with the least com­punc­tion at the prob­ab­il­ity of the youth be­ing starved, for they firmly be­lieved that, by his diabolic skill, he could eas­ily sup­ply him­self with nu­tri­ment.

Man­fred thus saw his com­mands even cheer­fully obeyed; and ap­point­ing a guard with strict or­ders to pre­vent any food be­ing con­veyed to the pris­oner, he dis­missed his friends and at­tend­ants, and re­tired to his own cham­ber, after lock­ing the gates of the castle, in which he suffered none but his do­mest­ics to re­main.

In the mean­time, the care and zeal of the young Ladies had brought the Prin­cess Hip­pol­ita to her­self, who amidst the trans­ports of her own sor­row fre­quently de­man­ded news of her lord, would have dis­missed her at­tend­ants to watch over him, and at last en­joined Mat­ilda to leave her, and visit and com­fort her father.  Mat­ilda, who wanted no af­fec­tion­ate duty to Man­fred, though she trembled at his aus­ter­ity, obeyed the or­ders of Hip­pol­ita, whom she ten­derly re­com­men­ded to Isa­bella; and in­quir­ing of the do­mest­ics for her father, was in­formed that he was re­tired to his cham­ber, and had com­manded that nobody should have ad­mit­tance to him.  Con­clud­ing that he was im­mersed in sor­row for the death of her brother, and fear­ing to re­new his tears by the sight of his sole re­main­ing child, she hes­it­ated whether she should break in upon his af­flic­tion; yet so­li­citude for him, backed by the com­mands of her mother, en­cour­aged her to ven­ture dis­obey­ing the or­ders he had given; a fault she had never been guilty of be­fore.

The gentle timid­ity of her nature made her pause for some minutes at his door.  She heard him tra­verse his cham­ber back­wards, and for­wards with dis­ordered steps; a mood which in­creased her ap­pre­hen­sions.  She was, how­ever, just go­ing to beg ad­mit­tance, when Man­fred sud­denly opened the door; and as it was now twi­light, con­cur­ring with the dis­order of his mind, he did not dis­tin­guish the per­son, but asked an­grily, who it was?  Mat­ilda replied, trem­bling—

“My dearest father, it is I, your daugh­ter.”

Man­fred, step­ping back hast­ily, cried, “Be­gone!  I do not want a daugh­ter;” and fling­ing back ab­ruptly, clapped the door against the ter­ri­fied Mat­ilda.

She was too well ac­quain­ted with her father’s im­petu­os­ity to ven­ture a second in­tru­sion.  When she had a little re­covered the shock of so bit­ter a re­cep­tion, she wiped away her tears to pre­vent the ad­di­tional stab that the know­ledge of it would give to Hip­pol­ita, who ques­tioned her in the most anxious terms on the health of Man­fred, and how he bore his loss.  Mat­ilda as­sured her he was well, and sup­por­ted his mis­for­tune with manly forti­tude.

“But will he not let me see him?” said Hip­pol­ita mourn­fully; “will he not per­mit me to blend my tears with his, and shed a mother’s sor­rows in the bosom of her Lord?  Or do you de­ceive me, Mat­ilda?  I know how Man­fred doted on his son: is not the stroke too heavy for him? has he not sunk un­der it?  You do not an­swer me—alas! I dread the worst!—Raise me, my maid­ens; I will, I will see my Lord.  Bear me to him in­stantly: he is dearer to me even than my chil­dren.”

Mat­ilda made signs to Isa­bella to pre­vent Hip­pol­ita’s rising; and both those lovely young wo­men were us­ing their gentle vi­ol­ence to stop and calm the Prin­cess, when a ser­vant, on the part of Man­fred, ar­rived and told Isa­bella that his Lord de­man­ded to speak with her.

“With me!” cried Isa­bella.

“Go,” said Hip­pol­ita, re­lieved by a mes­sage from her Lord: “Man­fred can­not sup­port the sight of his own fam­ily.  He thinks you less dis­ordered than we are, and dreads the shock of my grief.  Con­sole him, dear Isa­bella, and tell him I will smother my own an­guish rather than add to his.”

As it was now even­ing the ser­vant who con­duc­ted Isa­bella bore a torch be­fore her.  When they came to Man­fred, who was walk­ing im­pa­tiently about the gal­lery, he star­ted, and said hast­ily—

“Take away that light, and be­gone.”

Then shut­ting the door im­petu­ously, he flung him­self upon a bench against the wall, and bade Isa­bella sit by him.  She obeyed trem­bling.

“I sent for you, Lady,” said he—and then stopped un­der great ap­pear­ance of con­fu­sion.

“My Lord!”

“Yes, I sent for you on a mat­ter of great mo­ment,” re­sumed he.  “Dry your tears, young Lady—you have lost your bride­groom.  Yes, cruel fate! and I have lost the hopes of my race!  But Con­rad was not worthy of your beauty.”

“How, my Lord!” said Isa­bella; “sure you do not sus­pect me of not feel­ing the con­cern I ought: my duty and af­fec­tion would have al­ways—”

“Think no more of him,” in­ter­rup­ted Man­fred; “he was a sickly, puny child, and Heaven has per­haps taken him away, that I might not trust the hon­ours of my house on so frail a found­a­tion.  The line of Man­fred calls for nu­mer­ous sup­ports.  My fool­ish fond­ness for that boy blinded the eyes of my prudence—but it is bet­ter as it is.  I hope, in a few years, to have reason to re­joice at the death of Con­rad.”

Words can­not paint the as­ton­ish­ment of Isa­bella.  At first she ap­pre­hen­ded that grief had dis­ordered Man­fred’s un­der­stand­ing.  Her next thought sug­ges­ted that this strange dis­course was de­signed to en­snare her: she feared that Man­fred had per­ceived her in­dif­fer­ence for his son: and in con­sequence of that idea she replied—

“Good my Lord, do not doubt my ten­der­ness: my heart would have ac­com­pan­ied my hand.  Con­rad would have en­grossed all my care; and wherever fate shall dis­pose of me, I shall al­ways cher­ish his memory, and re­gard your High­ness and the vir­tu­ous Hip­pol­ita as my par­ents.”

“Curse on Hip­pol­ita!” cried Man­fred.  “For­get her from this mo­ment, as I do.  In short, Lady, you have missed a hus­band un­deserving of your charms: they shall now be bet­ter dis­posed of.  In­stead of a sickly boy, you shall have a hus­band in the prime of his age, who will know how to value your beau­ties, and who may ex­pect a nu­mer­ous off­spring.”

“Alas, my Lord!” said Isa­bella, “my mind is too sadly en­grossed by the re­cent cata­strophe in your fam­ily to think of an­other mar­riage.  If ever my father re­turns, and it shall be his pleas­ure, I shall obey, as I did when I con­sen­ted to give my hand to your son: but un­til his re­turn, per­mit me to re­main un­der your hos­pit­able roof, and em­ploy the mel­an­choly hours in as­suaging yours, Hip­pol­ita’s, and the fair Mat­ilda’s af­flic­tion.”

“I de­sired you once be­fore,” said Man­fred an­grily, “not to name that wo­man: from this hour she must be a stranger to you, as she must be to me.  In short, Isa­bella, since I can­not give you my son, I of­fer you my­self.”

“Heavens!” cried Isa­bella, wak­ing from her de­lu­sion, “what do I hear?  You! my Lord!  You!  My father-in-law! the father of Con­rad! the hus­band of the vir­tu­ous and tender Hip­pol­ita!”

“I tell you,” said Man­fred im­per­i­ously, “Hip­pol­ita is no longer my wife; I di­vorce her from this hour.  Too long has she cursed me by her un­fruit­ful­ness.  My fate de­pends on hav­ing sons, and this night I trust will give a new date to my hopes.”

At those words he seized the cold hand of Isa­bella, who was half dead with fright and hor­ror.  She shrieked, and star­ted from him, Man­fred rose to pur­sue her, when the moon, which was now up, and gleamed in at the op­pos­ite case­ment, presen­ted to his sight the plumes of the fatal hel­met, which rose to the height of the win­dows, wav­ing back­wards and for­wards in a tem­pes­tu­ous man­ner, and ac­com­pan­ied with a hol­low and rust­ling sound.  Isa­bella, who gathered cour­age from her situ­ation, and who dreaded noth­ing so much as Man­fred’s pur­suit of his de­clar­a­tion, cried—

“Look, my Lord! see, Heaven it­self de­clares against your im­pi­ous in­ten­tions!”

“Heaven nor Hell shall im­pede my designs,” said Man­fred, ad­van­cing again to seize the Prin­cess.

At that in­stant the por­trait of his grand­father, which hung over the bench where they had been sit­ting, uttered a deep sigh, and heaved its breast.

Isa­bella, whose back was turned to the pic­ture, saw not the mo­tion, nor knew whence the sound came, but star­ted, and said—

“Hark, my Lord!  What sound was that?” and at the same time made to­wards the door.

Man­fred, dis­trac­ted between the flight of Isa­bella, who had now reached the stairs, and yet un­able to keep his eyes from the pic­ture, which began to move, had, how­ever, ad­vanced some steps after her, still look­ing back­wards on the por­trait, when he saw it quit its panel, and des­cend on the floor with a grave and mel­an­choly air.

“Do I dream?” cried Man­fred, re­turn­ing; “or are the dev­ils them­selves in league against me?  Speak, in­ternal spectre!  Or, if thou art my grand­sire, why dost thou too con­spire against thy wretched des­cend­ant, who too dearly pays for—”  Ere he could fin­ish the sen­tence, the vis­ion sighed again, and made a sign to Man­fred to fol­low him.

“Lead on!” cried Man­fred; “I will fol­low thee to the gulf of per­di­tion.”

The spectre marched sed­ately, but de­jec­ted, to the end of the gal­lery, and turned into a cham­ber on the right hand.  Man­fred ac­com­pan­ied him at a little dis­tance, full of anxi­ety and hor­ror, but re­solved.  As he would have entered the cham­ber, the door was clapped to with vi­ol­ence by an in­vis­ible hand.  The Prince, col­lect­ing cour­age from this delay, would have for­cibly burst open the door with his foot, but found that it res­isted his ut­most ef­forts.

“Since Hell will not sat­isfy my curi­os­ity,” said Man­fred, “I will use the hu­man means in my power for pre­serving my race; Isa­bella shall not es­cape me.”

The lady, whose res­ol­u­tion had given way to ter­ror the mo­ment she had quit­ted Man­fred, con­tin­ued her flight to the bot­tom of the prin­cipal stair­case.  There she stopped, not know­ing whither to dir­ect her steps, nor how to es­cape from the im­petu­os­ity of the Prince.  The gates of the castle, she knew, were locked, and guards placed in the court.  Should she, as her heart promp­ted her, go and pre­pare Hip­pol­ita for the cruel des­tiny that awaited her, she did not doubt but Man­fred would seek her there, and that his vi­ol­ence would in­cite him to double the in­jury he med­it­ated, without leav­ing room for them to avoid the im­petu­os­ity of his pas­sions.  Delay might give him time to re­flect on the hor­rid meas­ures he had con­ceived, or pro­duce some cir­cum­stance in her fa­vour, if she could—for that night, at least—avoid his odi­ous pur­pose.  Yet where con­ceal her­self?  How avoid the pur­suit he would in­fal­libly make through­out the castle?

As these thoughts passed rap­idly through her mind, she re­col­lec­ted a sub­ter­raneous pas­sage which led from the vaults of the castle to the church of St. Nich­olas.  Could she reach the al­tar be­fore she was over­taken, she knew even Man­fred’s vi­ol­ence would not dare to pro­fane the sac­red­ness of the place; and she de­term­ined, if no other means of de­liv­er­ance offered, to shut her­self up forever among the holy vir­gins whose con­vent was con­tigu­ous to the cathed­ral.  In this res­ol­u­tion, she seized a lamp that burned at the foot of the stair­case, and hur­ried to­wards the secret pas­sage.

The lower part of the castle was hol­lowed into sev­eral in­tric­ate cloisters; and it was not easy for one un­der so much anxi­ety to find the door that opened into the cav­ern.  An aw­ful si­lence reigned through­out those sub­ter­raneous re­gions, ex­cept now and then some blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed, and which, grat­ing on the rusty hinges, were reechoed through that long labyrinth of dark­ness.  Every mur­mur struck her with new ter­ror; yet more she dreaded to hear the wrath­ful voice of Man­fred ur­ging his do­mest­ics to pur­sue her.

She trod as softly as im­pa­tience would give her leave, yet fre­quently stopped and listened to hear if she was fol­lowed.  In one of those mo­ments she thought she heard a sigh.  She shuddered, and re­coiled a few paces.  In a mo­ment she thought she heard the step of some per­son.  Her blood curdled; she con­cluded it was Man­fred.  Every sug­ges­tion that hor­ror could in­spire rushed into her mind.  She con­demned her rash flight, which had thus ex­posed her to his rage in a place where her cries were not likely to draw any­body to her as­sist­ance.  Yet the sound seemed not to come from be­hind.  If Man­fred knew where she was, he must have fol­lowed her.  She was still in one of the cloisters, and the steps she had heard were too dis­tinct to pro­ceed from the way she had come.  Cheered with this re­flec­tion, and hop­ing to find a friend in who­ever was not the Prince, she was go­ing to ad­vance, when a door that stood ajar, at some dis­tance to the left, was opened gently: but ere her lamp, which she held up, could dis­cover who opened it, the per­son re­treated pre­cip­it­ately on see­ing the light.

Isa­bella, whom every in­cid­ent was suf­fi­cient to dis­may, hes­it­ated whether she should pro­ceed.  Her dread of Man­fred soon out­weighed every other ter­ror.  The very cir­cum­stance of the per­son avoid­ing her gave her a sort of cour­age.  It could only be, she thought, some do­mestic be­long­ing to the castle.  Her gen­tle­ness had never raised her an en­emy, and con­scious in­no­cence made her hope that, un­less sent by the Prince’s or­der to seek her, his ser­vants would rather as­sist than pre­vent her flight.  For­ti­fy­ing her­self with these re­flec­tions, and be­liev­ing by what she could ob­serve that she was near the mouth of the sub­ter­raneous cav­ern, she ap­proached the door that had been opened; but a sud­den gust of wind that met her at the door ex­tin­guished her lamp, and left her in total dark­ness.

Words can­not paint the hor­ror of the Prin­cess’s situ­ation.  Alone in so dis­mal a place, her mind im­prin­ted with all the ter­rible events of the day, hope­less of es­cap­ing, ex­pect­ing every mo­ment the ar­rival of Man­fred, and far from tran­quil on know­ing she was within reach of some­body, she knew not whom, who for some cause seemed con­cealed there­abouts; all these thoughts crowded on her dis­trac­ted mind, and she was ready to sink un­der her ap­pre­hen­sions.  She ad­dressed her­self to every saint in heaven, and in­wardly im­plored their as­sist­ance.  For a con­sid­er­able time she re­mained in an agony of des­pair.

At last, as softly as was pos­sible, she felt for the door, and hav­ing found it, entered trem­bling into the vault from whence she had heard the sigh and steps.  It gave her a kind of mo­ment­ary joy to per­ceive an im­per­fect ray of clouded moon­shine gleam from the roof of the vault, which seemed to be fallen in, and from whence hung a frag­ment of earth or build­ing, she could not dis­tin­guish which, that ap­peared to have been crushed in­wards.  She ad­vanced eagerly to­wards this chasm, when she dis­cerned a hu­man form stand­ing close against the wall.

She shrieked, be­liev­ing it the ghost of her be­trothed Con­rad.  The fig­ure, ad­van­cing, said, in a sub­missive voice—

“Be not alarmed, Lady; I will not in­jure you.”

Isa­bella, a little en­cour­aged by the words and tone of voice of the stranger, and re­col­lect­ing that this must be the per­son who had opened the door, re­covered her spir­its enough to reply—

“Sir, who­ever you are, take pity on a wretched Prin­cess, stand­ing on the brink of de­struc­tion.  Ass­ist me to es­cape from this fatal castle, or in a few mo­ments I may be made miser­able forever.”

“Alas!” said the stranger, “what can I do to as­sist you?  I will die in your de­fence; but I am un­ac­quain­ted with the castle, and want—”

“Oh!” said Isa­bella, hast­ily in­ter­rupt­ing him; “help me but to find a trap-door that must be here­about, and it is the greatest ser­vice you can do me, for I have not a minute to lose.”

Say­ing a these words, she felt about on the pave­ment, and dir­ec­ted the stranger to search like­wise, for a smooth piece of brass en­closed in one of the stones.

“That,” said she, “is the lock, which opens with a spring, of which I know the secret.  If we can find that, I may es­cape—if not, alas! cour­teous stranger, I fear I shall have in­volved you in my mis­for­tunes: Man­fred will sus­pect you for the ac­com­plice of my flight, and you will fall a vic­tim to his re­sent­ment.”

“I value not my life,” said the stranger, “and it will be some com­fort to lose it in try­ing to de­liver you from his tyranny.”

“Gen­er­ous youth,” said Isa­bella, “how shall I ever re­quite—”

As she uttered those words, a ray of moon­shine, stream­ing through a cranny of the ruin above, shone dir­ectly on the lock they sought.

“Oh! trans­port!” said Isa­bella; “here is the trap-door!” and, tak­ing out the key, she touched the spring, which, start­ing aside, dis­covered an iron ring.  “Lift up the door,” said the Prin­cess.

The stranger obeyed, and be­neath ap­peared some stone steps des­cend­ing into a vault totally dark.

“We must go down here,” said Isa­bella.  “Fol­low me; dark and dis­mal as it is, we can­not miss our way; it leads dir­ectly to the church of St. Nich­olas.  But, per­haps,” ad­ded the Prin­cess mod­estly, “you have no reason to leave the castle, nor have I farther oc­ca­sion for your ser­vice; in a few minutes I shall be safe from Man­fred’s rage—only let me know to whom I am so much ob­liged.”

“I will never quit you,” said the stranger eagerly, “un­til I have placed you in safety—nor think me, Prin­cess, more gen­er­ous than I am; though you are my prin­cipal care—”

The stranger was in­ter­rup­ted by a sud­den noise of voices that seemed ap­proach­ing, and they soon dis­tin­guished these words—

“Talk not to me of nec­ro­man­cers; I tell you she must be in the castle; I will find her in spite of en­chant­ment.”

“Oh, heav­ens!” cried Isa­bella; “it is the voice of Man­fred!  Make haste, or we are ruined! and shut the trap-door after you.”

Say­ing this, she des­cen­ded the steps pre­cip­it­ately; and as the stranger hastened to fol­low her, he let the door slip out of his hands: it fell, and the spring closed over it.  He tried in vain to open it, not hav­ing ob­served Isa­bella’s method of touch­ing the spring; nor had he many mo­ments to make an es­say.  The noise of the fall­ing door had been heard by Man­fred, who, dir­ec­ted by the sound, hastened thither, at­ten­ded by his ser­vants with torches.

“It must be Isa­bella,” cried Man­fred, be­fore he entered the vault.  “She is es­cap­ing by the sub­ter­raneous pas­sage, but she can­not have got far.”

What was the as­ton­ish­ment of the Prince when, in­stead of Isa­bella, the light of the torches dis­covered to him the young peas­ant whom he thought con­fined un­der the fatal hel­met!

“Traitor!” said Man­fred; “how camest thou here?  I thought thee in dur­ance above in the court.”

“I am no traitor,” replied the young man boldly, “nor am I an­swer­able for your thoughts.”

“Pre­sump­tu­ous vil­lain!” cried Man­fred; “dost thou pro­voke my wrath?  Tell me, how hast thou es­caped from above?  Thou hast cor­rup­ted thy guards, and their lives shall an­swer it.”

“My poverty,” said the peas­ant calmly, “will dis­culp­ate them: though the min­is­ters of a tyr­ant’s wrath, to thee they are faith­ful, and but too will­ing to ex­ecute the or­ders which you un­justly im­posed upon them.”

“Art thou so hardy as to dare my ven­geance?” said the Prince; “but tor­tures shall force the truth from thee.  Tell me; I will know thy ac­com­plices.”

“There was my ac­com­plice!” said the youth, smil­ing, and point­ing to the roof.

Man­fred ordered the torches to be held up, and per­ceived that one of the cheeks of the en­chanted casque had forced its way through the pave­ment of the court, as his ser­vants had let it fall over the peas­ant, and had broken through into the vault, leav­ing a gap, through which the peas­ant had pressed him­self some minutes be­fore he was found by Isa­bella.

“Was that the way by which thou didst des­cend?” said Man­fred.

“It was,” said the youth.

“But what noise was that,” said Man­fred, “which I heard as I entered the cloister?”

“A door clapped,” said the peas­ant; “I heard it as well as you.”

“What door?” said Man­fred hast­ily.

“I am not ac­quain­ted with your castle,” said the peas­ant; “this is the first time I ever entered it, and this vault the only part of it within which I ever was.”

“But I tell thee,” said Man­fred (wish­ing to find out if the youth had dis­covered the trap-door), “it was this way I heard the noise.  My ser­vants heard it too.”

“My Lord,” in­ter­rup­ted one of them of­fi­ciously, “to be sure it was the trap-door, and he was go­ing to make his es­cape.”

“Peace, block­head!” said the Prince an­grily; “if he was go­ing to es­cape, how should he come on this side?  I will know from his own mouth what noise it was I heard.  Tell me truly; thy life de­pends on thy vera­city.”

“My vera­city is dearer to me than my life,” said the peas­ant; “nor would I pur­chase the one by for­feit­ing the other.”

“Indeed, young philo­sopher!” said Man­fred con­temp­tu­ously; “tell me, then, what was the noise I heard?”

“Ask me what I can an­swer,” said he, “and put me to death in­stantly if I tell you a lie.”

Man­fred, grow­ing im­pa­tient at the steady valour and in­dif­fer­ence of the youth, cried—

“Well, then, thou man of truth, an­swer!  Was it the fall of the trap-door that I heard?”

“It was,” said the youth.

“It was!” said the Prince; “and how didst thou come to know there was a trap-door here?”

“I saw the plate of brass by a gleam of moon­shine,” replied he.

“But what told thee it was a lock?” said Man­fred.  “How didst thou dis­cover the secret of open­ing it?”

“Provid­ence, that de­livered me from the hel­met, was able to dir­ect me to the spring of a lock,” said he.

“Provid­ence should have gone a little farther, and have placed thee out of the reach of my re­sent­ment,” said Man­fred.  “When Provid­ence had taught thee to open the lock, it aban­doned thee for a fool, who did not know how to make use of its fa­vours.  Why didst thou not pur­sue the path poin­ted out for thy es­cape?  Why didst thou shut the trap-door be­fore thou hadst des­cen­ded the steps?”

“I might ask you, my Lord,” said the peas­ant, “how I, totally un­ac­quain­ted with your castle, was to know that those steps led to any out­let? but I scorn to evade your ques­tions.  Wherever those steps lead to, per­haps I should have ex­plored the way—I could not be in a worse situ­ation than I was.  But the truth is, I let the trap-door fall: your im­me­di­ate ar­rival fol­lowed.  I had given the alarm—what im­por­ted it to me whether I was seized a minute sooner or a minute later?”

“Thou art a res­ol­ute vil­lain for thy years,” said Man­fred; “yet on re­flec­tion I sus­pect thou dost but trifle with me.  Thou hast not yet told me how thou didst open the lock.”

“That I will show you, my Lord,” said the peas­ant; and, tak­ing up a frag­ment of stone that had fallen from above, he laid him­self on the trap-door, and began to beat on the piece of brass that covered it, mean­ing to gain time for the es­cape of the Prin­cess.  This pres­ence of mind, joined to the frank­ness of the youth, staggered Man­fred.  He even felt a dis­pos­i­tion to­wards par­don­ing one who had been guilty of no crime.  Man­fred was not one of those sav­age tyr­ants who wan­ton in cruelty un­pro­voked.  The cir­cum­stances of his for­tune had given an as­per­ity to his tem­per, which was nat­ur­ally hu­mane; and his vir­tues were al­ways ready to op­er­ate, when his pas­sions did not ob­scure his reason.

While the Prince was in this sus­pense, a con­fused noise of voices echoed through the dis­tant vaults.  As the sound ap­proached, he dis­tin­guished the clam­ours of some of his do­mest­ics, whom he had dis­persed through the castle in search of Isa­bella, call­ing out—

“Where is my Lord? where is the Prince?”

“Here I am,” said Man­fred, as they came nearer; “have you found the Prin­cess?”

The first that ar­rived, replied, “Oh, my Lord!  I am glad we have found you.”

“Found me!” said Man­fred; “have you found the Prin­cess?”

“We thought we had, my Lord,” said the fel­low, look­ing ter­ri­fied, “but—”

“But, what?” cried the Prince; “has she es­caped?”

“Jaquez and I, my Lord—”

“Yes, I and Diego,” in­ter­rup­ted the second, who came up in still greater con­sterna­tion.

“Speak one of you at a time,” said Man­fred; “I ask you, where is the Prin­cess?”

“We do not know,” said they both to­gether; “but we are frightened out of our wits.”

“So I think, block­heads,” said Man­fred; “what is it has scared you thus?”

“Oh! my Lord,” said Jaquez, “Diego has seen such a sight! your High­ness would not be­lieve our eyes.”

“What new ab­surdity is this?” cried Man­fred; “give me a dir­ect an­swer, or, by Heaven—”

“Why, my Lord, if it please your High­ness to hear me,” said the poor fel­low, “Diego and I—”

“Yes, I and Jaquez—” cried his com­rade.

“Did not I for­bid you to speak both at a time?” said the Prince: “you, Jaquez, an­swer; for the other fool seems more dis­trac­ted than thou art; what is the mat­ter?”

“My gra­cious Lord,” said Jaquez, “if it please your High­ness to hear me; Diego and I, ac­cord­ing to your High­ness’s or­ders, went to search for the young Lady; but be­ing com­pre­hens­ive that we might meet the ghost of my young Lord, your High­ness’s son, God rest his soul, as he has not re­ceived Chris­tian burial—”

“Sot!” cried Man­fred in a rage; “is it only a ghost, then, that thou hast seen?”

“Oh! worse! worse! my Lord,” cried Diego: “I had rather have seen ten whole ghosts.”

“Grant me pa­tience!” said Man­fred; “these block­heads dis­tract me.  Out of my sight, Diego! and thou, Jaquez, tell me in one word, art thou sober? art thou rav­ing? thou wast wont to have some sense: has the other sot frightened him­self and thee too?  Speak; what is it he fan­cies he has seen?”

“Why, my Lord,” replied Jaquez, trem­bling, “I was go­ing to tell your High­ness, that since the calam­it­ous mis­for­tune of my young Lord, God rest his pre­cious soul! not one of us your High­ness’s faith­ful ser­vants—in­deed we are, my Lord, though poor men—I say, not one of us has dared to set a foot about the castle, but two to­gether: so Diego and I, think­ing that my young Lady might be in the great gal­lery, went up there to look for her, and tell her your High­ness wanted some­thing to im­part to her.”

“O blun­der­ing fools!” cried Man­fred; “and in the mean­time, she has made her es­cape, be­cause you were afraid of gob­lins!—Why, thou knave! she left me in the gal­lery; I came from thence my­self.”

“For all that, she may be there still for aught I know,” said Jaquez; “but the devil shall have me be­fore I seek her there again—poor Diego!  I do not be­lieve he will ever re­cover it.”

“Re­cover what?” said Man­fred; “am I never to learn what it is has ter­ri­fied these ras­cals?—but I lose my time; fol­low me, slave; I will see if she is in the gal­lery.”

“For Heaven’s sake, my dear, good Lord,” cried Jaquez, “do not go to the gal­lery.  Satan him­self I be­lieve is in the cham­ber next to the gal­lery.”

Man­fred, who hitherto had treated the ter­ror of his ser­vants as an idle panic, was struck at this new cir­cum­stance.  He re­col­lec­ted the ap­par­i­tion of the por­trait, and the sud­den clos­ing of the door at the end of the gal­lery.  His voice faltered, and he asked with dis­order—

“What is in the great cham­ber?”

“My Lord,” said Jaquez, “when Diego and I came into the gal­lery, he went first, for he said he had more cour­age than I.  So when we came into the gal­lery we found nobody.  We looked un­der every bench and stool; and still we found nobody.”

“Were all the pic­tures in their places?” said Man­fred.

“Yes, my Lord,” answered Jaquez; “but we did not think of look­ing be­hind them.”

“Well, well!” said Man­fred; “pro­ceed.”

“When we came to the door of the great cham­ber,” con­tin­ued Jaquez, “we found it shut.”

“And could not you open it?” said Man­fred.

“Oh! yes, my Lord; would to Heaven we had not!” replied he—“nay, it was not I neither; it was Diego: he was grown fool­hardy, and would go on, though I ad­vised him not—if ever I open a door that is shut again—”

“Trifle not,” said Man­fred, shud­der­ing, “but tell me what you saw in the great cham­ber on open­ing the door.”

“I! my Lord!” said Jaquez; “I was be­hind Diego; but I heard the noise.”

“Jaquez,” said Man­fred, in a sol­emn tone of voice; “tell me, I ad­jure thee by the souls of my an­cest­ors, what was it thou saw­est? what was it thou heard­est?”

“It was Diego saw it, my Lord, it was not I,” replied Jaquez; “I only heard the noise.  Diego had no sooner opened the door, than he cried out, and ran back.  I ran back too, and said, ‘Is it the ghost?’  ‘The ghost! no, no,’ said Diego, and his hair stood on end—‘it is a gi­ant, I be­lieve; he is all clad in ar­mour, for I saw his foot and part of his leg, and they are as large as the hel­met be­low in the court.’  As he said these words, my Lord, we heard a vi­ol­ent mo­tion and the rat­tling of ar­mour, as if the gi­ant was rising, for Diego has told me since that he be­lieves the gi­ant was ly­ing down, for the foot and leg were stretched at length on the floor.  Be­fore we could get to the end of the gal­lery, we heard the door of the great cham­ber clap be­hind us, but we did not dare turn back to see if the gi­ant was fol­low­ing us—yet, now I think on it, we must have heard him if he had pur­sued us—but for Heaven’s sake, good my Lord, send for the chap­lain, and have the castle ex­or­cised, for, for cer­tain, it is en­chanted.”

“Ay, pray do, my Lord,” cried all the ser­vants at once, “or we must leave your High­ness’s ser­vice.”

“Peace, dot­ards!” said Man­fred, “and fol­low me; I will know what all this means.”

“We! my Lord!” cried they with one voice; “we would not go up to the gal­lery for your High­ness’s rev­enue.”  The young peas­ant, who had stood si­lent, now spoke.

“Will your High­ness,” said he, “per­mit me to try this ad­ven­ture?  My life is of con­sequence to nobody; I fear no bad an­gel, and have of­fen­ded no good one.”

“Your be­ha­viour is above your seem­ing,” said Man­fred, view­ing him with sur­prise and ad­mir­a­tion—“here­after I will re­ward your bravery—but now,” con­tin­ued he with a sigh, “I am so cir­cum­stanced, that I dare trust no eyes but my own.  However, I give you leave to ac­com­pany me.”

Man­fred, when he first fol­lowed Isa­bella from the gal­lery, had gone dir­ectly to the apart­ment of his wife, con­clud­ing the Prin­cess had re­tired thither.  Hip­pol­ita, who knew his step, rose with anxious fond­ness to meet her Lord, whom she had not seen since the death of their son.  She would have flown in a trans­port mixed of joy and grief to his bosom, but he pushed her rudely off, and said—

“Where is Isa­bella?”

“Isa­bella! my Lord!” said the as­ton­ished Hip­pol­ita.

“Yes, Isa­bella,” cried Man­fred im­per­i­ously; “I want Isa­bella.”

“My Lord,” replied Mat­ilda, who per­ceived how much his be­ha­viour had shocked her mother, “she has not been with us since your High­ness summoned her to your apart­ment.”

“Tell me where she is,” said the Prince; “I do not want to know where she has been.”

“My good Lord,” says Hip­pol­ita, “your daugh­ter tells you the truth: Isa­bella left us by your com­mand, and has not re­turned since;—but, my good Lord, com­pose your­self: re­tire to your rest: this dis­mal day has dis­ordered you.  Isa­bella shall wait your or­ders in the morn­ing.”

“What, then, you know where she is!” cried Man­fred.  “Tell me dir­ectly, for I will not lose an in­stant—and you, wo­man,” speak­ing to his wife, “or­der your chap­lain to at­tend me forth­with.”

“Isa­bella,” said Hip­pol­ita calmly, “is re­tired, I sup­pose, to her cham­ber: she is not ac­cus­tomed to watch at this late hour.  Gra­cious my Lord,” con­tin­ued she, “let me know what has dis­turbed you.  Has Isa­bella of­fen­ded you?”

“Trouble me not with ques­tions,” said Man­fred, “but tell me where she is.”

“Mat­ilda shall call her,” said the Prin­cess.  “Sit down, my Lord, and re­sume your wonted forti­tude.”

“What, art thou jeal­ous of Isa­bella?” replied he, “that you wish to be present at our in­ter­view!”

“Good heav­ens! my Lord,” said Hip­pol­ita, “what is it your High­ness means?”

“Thou wilt know ere many minutes are passed,” said the cruel Prince.  “Send your chap­lain to me, and wait my pleas­ure here.”

At these words he flung out of the room in search of Isa­bella, leav­ing the amazed ladies thun­der­struck with his words and frantic de­port­ment, and lost in vain con­jec­tures on what he was med­it­at­ing.

Man­fred was now re­turn­ing from the vault, at­ten­ded by the peas­ant and a few of his ser­vants whom he had ob­liged to ac­com­pany him.  He as­cen­ded the stair­case without stop­ping till he ar­rived at the gal­lery, at the door of which he met Hip­pol­ita and her chap­lain.  When Diego had been dis­missed by Man­fred, he had gone dir­ectly to the Prin­cess’s apart­ment with the alarm of what he had seen.  That ex­cel­lent Lady, who no more than Man­fred doubted of the real­ity of the vis­ion, yet af­fected to treat it as a de­li­rium of the ser­vant.  Willing, how­ever, to save her Lord from any ad­di­tional shock, and pre­pared by a series of griefs not to tremble at any ac­ces­sion to it, she de­term­ined to make her­self the first sac­ri­fice, if fate had marked the present hour for their de­struc­tion.  Dis­miss­ing the re­luct­ant Mat­ilda to her rest, who in vain sued for leave to ac­com­pany her mother, and at­ten­ded only by her chap­lain, Hip­pol­ita had vis­ited the gal­lery and great cham­ber; and now with more serenity of soul than she had felt for many hours, she met her Lord, and as­sured him that the vis­ion of the gi­gantic leg and foot was all a fable; and no doubt an im­pres­sion made by fear, and the dark and dis­mal hour of the night, on the minds of his ser­vants.  She and the chap­lain had ex­amined the cham­ber, and found everything in the usual or­der.

Man­fred, though per­suaded, like his wife, that the vis­ion had been no work of fancy, re­covered a little from the tem­pest of mind into which so many strange events had thrown him.  Ashamed, too, of his in­hu­man treat­ment of a Prin­cess who re­turned every in­jury with new marks of ten­der­ness and duty, he felt re­turn­ing love for­cing it­self into his eyes; but not less ashamed of feel­ing re­morse to­wards one against whom he was in­wardly med­it­at­ing a yet more bit­ter out­rage, he curbed the yearn­ings of his heart, and did not dare to lean even to­wards pity.  The next trans­ition of his soul was to ex­quis­ite vil­lainy.

Pre­sum­ing on the un­shaken sub­mis­sion of Hip­pol­ita, he flattered him­self that she would not only ac­qui­esce with pa­tience to a di­vorce, but would obey, if it was his pleas­ure, in en­deav­our­ing to per­suade Isa­bella to give him her hand—but ere he could in­dulge his hor­rid hope, he re­flec­ted that Isa­bella was not to be found.  Com­ing to him­self, he gave or­ders that every av­enue to the castle should be strictly guarded, and charged his do­mest­ics on pain of their lives to suf­fer nobody to pass out.  The young peas­ant, to whom he spoke fa­vour­ably, he ordered to re­main in a small cham­ber on the stairs, in which there was a pal­let-bed, and the key of which he took away him­self, telling the youth he would talk with him in the morn­ing.  Then dis­miss­ing his at­tend­ants, and be­stow­ing a sul­len kind of half-nod on Hip­pol­ita, he re­tired to his own cham­ber.

II

Mat­ilda, who by Hip­pol­ita’s or­der had re­tired to her apart­ment, was ill-dis­posed to take any rest.  The shock­ing fate of her brother had deeply af­fected her.  She was sur­prised at not see­ing Isa­bella; but the strange words which had fallen from her father, and his ob­scure men­ace to the Prin­cess his wife, ac­com­pan­ied by the most furi­ous be­ha­viour, had filled her gentle mind with ter­ror and alarm.  She waited anxiously for the re­turn of Bi­anca, a young dam­sel that at­ten­ded her, whom she had sent to learn what was be­come of Isa­bella.  Bi­anca soon ap­peared, and in­formed her mis­tress of what she had gathered from the ser­vants, that Isa­bella was nowhere to be found.  She re­lated the ad­ven­ture of the young peas­ant who had been dis­covered in the vault, though with many simple ad­di­tions from the in­co­her­ent ac­counts of the do­mest­ics; and she dwelt prin­cip­ally on the gi­gantic leg and foot which had been seen in the gal­lery-cham­ber.  This last cir­cum­stance had ter­ri­fied Bi­anca so much, that she was re­joiced when Mat­ilda told her that she would not go to rest, but would watch till the Prin­cess should rise.

The young Prin­cess wear­ied her­self in con­jec­tures on the flight of Isa­bella, and on the threats of Man­fred to her mother.  “But what busi­ness could he have so ur­gent with the chap­lain?” said Mat­ilda, “Does he in­tend to have my brother’s body in­terred privately in the chapel?”

“Oh, Madam!” said Bi­anca, “now I guess.  As you are be­come his heir­ess, he is im­pa­tient to have you mar­ried: he has al­ways been rav­ing for more sons; I war­rant he is now im­pa­tient for grand­sons.  As sure as I live, Madam, I shall see you a bride at last.—Good madam, you won’t cast off your faith­ful Bi­anca: you won’t put Donna Rosara over me now you are a great Prin­cess.”

“My poor Bi­anca,” said Mat­ilda, “how fast your thoughts amble!  I a great prin­cess!  What hast thou seen in Man­fred’s be­ha­viour since my brother’s death that be­speaks any in­crease of ten­der­ness to me?  No, Bi­anca; his heart was ever a stranger to me—but he is my father, and I must not com­plain.  Nay, if Heaven shuts my father’s heart against me, it over­pays my little merit in the ten­der­ness of my mother—O that dear mother! yes, Bi­anca, ’tis there I feel the rugged tem­per of Man­fred.  I can sup­port his harsh­ness to me with pa­tience; but it wounds my soul when I am wit­ness to his cause­less sever­ity to­wards her.”

“Oh! Madam,” said Bi­anca, “all men use their wives so, when they are weary of them.”

“And yet you con­grat­u­lated me but now,” said Mat­ilda, “when you fan­cied my father in­ten­ded to dis­pose of me!”

“I would have you a great Lady,” replied Bi­anca, “come what will.  I do not wish to see you moped in a con­vent, as you would be if you had your will, and if my Lady, your mother, who knows that a bad hus­band is bet­ter than no hus­band at all, did not hinder you.—Bless me! what noise is that!  St. Nich­olas for­give me!  I was but in jest.”

“It is the wind,” said Mat­ilda, “whist­ling through the bat­tle­ments in the tower above: you have heard it a thou­sand times.”

“Nay,” said Bi­anca, “there was no harm neither in what I said: it is no sin to talk of mat­ri­mony—and so, Madam, as I was say­ing, if my Lord Man­fred should of­fer you a hand­some young Prince for a bride­groom, you would drop him a curt­sey, and tell him you would rather take the veil?”

“Thank Heaven!  I am in no such danger,” said Mat­ilda: “you know how many pro­pos­als for me he has re­jec­ted—”

“And you thank him, like a du­ti­ful daugh­ter, do you, Madam?  But come, Madam; sup­pose, to­mor­row morn­ing, he was to send for you to the great coun­cil cham­ber, and there you should find at his el­bow a lovely young Prince, with large black eyes, a smooth white fore­head, and manly curl­ing locks like jet; in short, Madam, a young hero re­sem­bling the pic­ture of the good Alf­onso in the gal­lery, which you sit and gaze at for hours to­gether—”

“Do not speak lightly of that pic­ture,” in­ter­rup­ted Mat­ilda sigh­ing; “I know the ad­or­a­tion with which I look at that pic­ture is un­com­mon—but I am not in love with a col­oured panel.  The char­ac­ter of that vir­tu­ous Prince, the ven­er­a­tion with which my mother has in­spired me for his memory, the oris­ons which, I know not why, she has en­joined me to pour forth at his tomb, all have con­curred to per­suade me that some­how or other my des­tiny is linked with some­thing re­lat­ing to him.”

“Lord, Madam! how should that be?” said Bi­anca; “I have al­ways heard that your fam­ily was in no way re­lated to his: and I am sure I can­not con­ceive why my Lady, the Prin­cess, sends you in a cold morn­ing or a damp even­ing to pray at his tomb: he is no saint by the al­man­ack.  If you must pray, why does she not bid you ad­dress your­self to our great St. Nich­olas?  I am sure he is the saint I pray to for a hus­band.”

“Per­haps my mind would be less af­fected,” said Mat­ilda, “if my mother would ex­plain her reas­ons to me: but it is the mys­tery she ob­serves, that in­spires me with this—I know not what to call it.  As she never acts from caprice, I am sure there is some fatal secret at bot­tom—nay, I know there is: in her agony of grief for my brother’s death she dropped some words that in­tim­ated as much.”

“Oh! dear Madam,” cried Bi­anca, “what were they?”

“No,” said Mat­ilda, “if a par­ent lets fall a word, and wishes it re­called, it is not for a child to ut­ter it.”

“What! was she sorry for what she had said?” asked Bi­anca; “I am sure, Madam, you may trust me—”

“With my own little secrets when I have any, I may,” said Mat­ilda; “but never with my mother’s: a child ought to have no ears or eyes but as a par­ent dir­ects.”

“Well! to be sure, Madam, you were born to be a saint,” said Bi­anca, “and there is no res­ist­ing one’s vo­ca­tion: you will end in a con­vent at last.  But there is my Lady Isa­bella would not be so re­served to me: she will let me talk to her of young men: and when a hand­some cava­lier has come to the castle, she has owned to me that she wished your brother Con­rad re­sembled him.”

“Bi­anca,” said the Prin­cess, “I do not al­low you to men­tion my friend dis­respect­fully.  Isa­bella is of a cheer­ful dis­pos­i­tion, but her soul is pure as vir­tue it­self.  She knows your idle bab­bling hu­mour, and per­haps has now and then en­cour­aged it, to di­vert mel­an­choly, and en­liven the solitude in which my father keeps us—”

“Blessed Mary!” said Bi­anca, start­ing, “there it is again!  Dear Madam, do you hear noth­ing? this castle is cer­tainly haunted!”

“Peace!” said Mat­ilda, “and listen!  I did think I heard a voice—but it must be fancy: your ter­rors, I sup­pose, have in­fec­ted me.”

“Indeed! in­deed!  Madam,” said Bi­anca, half-weep­ing with agony, “I am sure I heard a voice.”

“Does any­body lie in the cham­ber be­neath?” said the Prin­cess.

“Nobody has dared to lie there,” answered Bi­anca, “since the great as­tro­lo­ger, that was your brother’s tu­tor, drowned him­self.  For cer­tain, Madam, his ghost and the young Prince’s are now met in the cham­ber be­low—for Heaven’s sake let us fly to your mother’s apart­ment!”

“I charge you not to stir,” said Mat­ilda.  “If they are spir­its in pain, we may ease their suf­fer­ings by ques­tion­ing them.  They can mean no hurt to us, for we have not in­jured them—and if they should, shall we be more safe in one cham­ber than in an­other?  Reach me my beads; we will say a prayer, and then speak to them.”

“Oh! dear Lady, I would not speak to a ghost for the world!” cried Bi­anca.  As she said those words they heard the case­ment of the little cham­ber be­low Mat­ilda’s open.  They listened at­tent­ively, and in a few minutes thought they heard a per­son sing, but could not dis­tin­guish the words.

“This can be no evil spirit,” said the Prin­cess, in a low voice; “it is un­doubtedly one of the fam­ily—open the win­dow, and we shall know the voice.”

“I dare not, in­deed, Madam,” said Bi­anca.

“Thou art a very fool,” said Mat­ilda, open­ing the win­dow gently her­self.  The noise the Prin­cess made was, how­ever, heard by the per­son be­neath, who stopped; and they con­cluded had heard the case­ment open.

“Is any­body be­low?” said the Prin­cess; “if there is, speak.”

“Yes,” said an un­known voice.

“Who is it?” said Mat­ilda.

“A stranger,” replied the voice.

“What stranger?” said she; “and how didst thou come there at this un­usual hour, when all the gates of the castle are locked?”

“I am not here will­ingly,” answered the voice.  “But par­don me, Lady, if I have dis­turbed your rest; I knew not that I was over­heard.  Sleep had for­saken me; I left a rest­less couch, and came to waste the irk­some hours with gaz­ing on the fair ap­proach of morn­ing, im­pa­tient to be dis­missed from this castle.”

“Thy words and ac­cents,” said Mat­ilda, “are of mel­an­choly cast; if thou art un­happy, I pity thee.  If poverty af­flicts thee, let me know it; I will men­tion thee to the Prin­cess, whose be­ne­fi­cent soul ever melts for the dis­tressed, and she will re­lieve thee.”

“I am in­deed un­happy,” said the stranger; “and I know not what wealth is.  But I do not com­plain of the lot which Heaven has cast for me; I am young and healthy, and am not ashamed of ow­ing my sup­port to my­self—yet think me not proud, or that I dis­dain your gen­er­ous of­fers.  I will re­mem­ber you in my oris­ons, and will pray for bless­ings on your gra­cious self and your noble mis­tress—if I sigh, Lady, it is for oth­ers, not for my­self.”

“Now I have it, Madam,” said Bi­anca, whis­per­ing the Prin­cess; “this is cer­tainly the young peas­ant; and, by my con­science, he is in love—Well! this is a charm­ing ad­ven­ture!—do, Madam, let us sift him.  He does not know you, but takes you for one of my Lady Hip­pol­ita’s wo­men.”

“Art thou not ashamed, Bi­anca!” said the Prin­cess.  “What right have we to pry into the secrets of this young man’s heart?  He seems vir­tu­ous and frank, and tells us he is un­happy.  Are those cir­cum­stances that au­thor­ise us to make a prop­erty of him?  How are we en­titled to his con­fid­ence?”

“Lord, Madam! how little you know of love!” replied Bi­anca; “why, lov­ers have no pleas­ure equal to talk­ing of their mis­tress.”

“And would you have me be­come a peas­ant’s con­fid­ante?” said the Prin­cess.

“Well, then, let me talk to him,” said Bi­anca; “though I have the hon­our of be­ing your High­ness’s maid of hon­our, I was not al­ways so great.  Besides, if love levels ranks, it raises them too; I have a re­spect for any young man in love.”

“Peace, sim­pleton!” said the Prin­cess.  “Though he said he was un­happy, it does not fol­low that he must be in love.  Think of all that has happened today, and tell me if there are no mis­for­tunes but what love causes.—Stranger,” re­sumed the Prin­cess, “if thy mis­for­tunes have not been oc­ca­sioned by thy own fault, and are within the com­pass of the Prin­cess Hip­pol­ita’s power to re­dress, I will take upon me to an­swer that she will be thy pro­tectress.  When thou art dis­missed from this castle, re­pair to holy father Jerome, at the con­vent ad­join­ing to the church of St. Nich­olas, and make thy story known to him, as far as thou thinkest meet.  He will not fail to in­form the Prin­cess, who is the mother of all that want her as­sist­ance.  Farewell; it is not seemly for me to hold farther con­verse with a man at this un­wonted hour.”

“May the saints guard thee, gra­cious Lady!” replied the peas­ant; “but oh! if a poor and worth­less stranger might pre­sume to beg a minute’s audi­ence farther; am I so happy? the case­ment is not shut; might I ven­ture to ask—”

“Speak quickly,” said Mat­ilda; “the morn­ing dawns apace: should the la­bour­ers come into the fields and per­ceive us—What wouldst thou ask?”

“I know not how, I know not if I dare,” said the Young stranger, fal­ter­ing; “yet the hu­man­ity with which you have spoken to me em­boldens—Lady! dare I trust you?”

“Heavens!” said Mat­ilda, “what dost thou mean?  With what wouldst thou trust me?  Speak boldly, if thy secret is fit to be en­trus­ted to a vir­tu­ous breast.”

“I would ask,” said the peas­ant, re­col­lect­ing him­self, “whether what I have heard from the do­mest­ics is true, that the Prin­cess is miss­ing from the castle?”

“What im­ports it to thee to know?” replied Mat­ilda.  “Thy first words be­spoke a prudent and be­com­ing grav­ity.  Dost thou come hither to pry into the secrets of Man­fred?  Adieu.  I have been mis­taken in thee.”  Say­ing these words she shut the case­ment hast­ily, without giv­ing the young man time to reply.

“I had ac­ted more wisely,” said the Prin­cess to Bi­anca, with some sharp­ness, “if I had let thee con­verse with this peas­ant; his in­quis­it­ive­ness seems of a piece with thy own.”

“It is not fit for me to ar­gue with your High­ness,” replied Bi­anca; “but per­haps the ques­tions I should have put to him would have been more to the pur­pose than those you have been pleased to ask him.”

“Oh! no doubt,” said Mat­ilda; “you are a very dis­creet per­son­age!  May I know what you would have asked him?”

“A bystander of­ten sees more of the game than those that play,” answered Bi­anca.  “Does your High­ness think, Madam, that this ques­tion about my Lady Isa­bella was the res­ult of mere curi­os­ity?  No, no, Madam, there is more in it than you great folks are aware of.  Lopez told me that all the ser­vants be­lieve this young fel­low con­trived my Lady Isa­bella’s es­cape; now, pray, Madam, ob­serve you and I both know that my Lady Isa­bella never much fan­cied the Prince your brother.  Well! he is killed just in a crit­ical minute—I ac­cuse nobody.  A hel­met falls from the moon—so, my Lord, your father says; but Lopez and all the ser­vants say that this young spark is a ma­gi­cian, and stole it from Alf­onso’s tomb—”

“Have done with this rhaps­ody of im­per­tin­ence,” said Mat­ilda.

“Nay, Madam, as you please,” cried Bi­anca; “yet it is very par­tic­u­lar though, that my Lady Isa­bella should be miss­ing the very same day, and that this young sor­cerer should be found at the mouth of the trap-door.  I ac­cuse nobody; but if my young Lord came hon­estly by his death—”

“Dare not on thy duty,” said Mat­ilda, “to breathe a sus­pi­cion on the pur­ity of my dear Isa­bella’s fame.”

“Pur­ity, or not pur­ity,” said Bi­anca, “gone she is—a stranger is found that nobody knows; you ques­tion him your­self; he tells you he is in love, or un­happy, it is the same thing—nay, he owned he was un­happy about oth­ers; and is any­body un­happy about an­other, un­less they are in love with them? and at the very next word, he asks in­no­cently, pour soul! if my Lady Isa­bella is miss­ing.”

“To be sure,” said Mat­ilda, “thy ob­ser­va­tions are not totally without found­a­tion—Isa­bella’s flight amazes me.  The curi­os­ity of the stranger is very par­tic­u­lar; yet Isa­bella never con­cealed a thought from me.”

“So she told you,” said Bi­anca, “to fish out your secrets; but who knows, Madam, but this stranger may be some Prince in dis­guise?  Do, Madam, let me open the win­dow, and ask him a few ques­tions.”

“No,” replied Mat­ilda, “I will ask him my­self, if he knows aught of Isa­bella; he is not worthy I should con­verse farther with him.”  She was go­ing to open the case­ment, when they heard the bell ring at the postern-gate of the castle, which is on the right hand of the tower, where Mat­ilda lay.  This pre­ven­ted the Prin­cess from re­new­ing the con­ver­sa­tion with the stranger.

After con­tinu­ing si­lent for some time, “I am per­suaded,” said she to Bi­anca, “that whatever be the cause of Isa­bella’s flight it had no un­worthy motive.  If this stranger was ac­cess­ory to it, she must be sat­is­fied with his fi­del­ity and worth.  I ob­served, did not you, Bi­anca? that his words were tinc­tured with an un­com­mon in­fu­sion of piety.  It was no ruf­fian’s speech; his phrases were be­com­ing a man of gentle birth.”

“I told you, Madam,” said Bi­anca, “that I was sure he was some Prince in dis­guise.”

“Yet,” said Mat­ilda, “if he was privy to her es­cape, how will you ac­count for his not ac­com­pa­ny­ing her in her flight? why ex­pose him­self un­ne­ces­sar­ily and rashly to my father’s re­sent­ment?”

“As for that, Madam,” replied she, “if he could get from un­der the hel­met, he will find ways of elud­ing your father’s an­ger.  I do not doubt but he has some talis­man or other about him.”

“You re­solve everything into ma­gic,” said Mat­ilda; “but a man who has any in­ter­course with in­fernal spir­its, does not dare to make use of those tre­mend­ous and holy words which he uttered.  Didst thou not ob­serve with what fer­vour he vowed to re­mem­ber me to heaven in his pray­ers?  Yes; Isa­bella was un­doubtedly con­vinced of his piety.”

“Com­mend me to the piety of a young fel­low and a dam­sel that con­sult to elope!” said Bi­anca.  “No, no, Madam, my Lady Isa­bella is of an­other guess mould than you take her for.  She used in­deed to sigh and lift up her eyes in your com­pany, be­cause she knows you are a saint; but when your back was turned—”

“You wrong her,” said Mat­ilda; “Isa­bella is no hy­po­crite; she has a due sense of de­vo­tion, but never af­fected a call she has not.  On the con­trary, she al­ways com­bated my in­clin­a­tion for the cloister; and though I own the mys­tery she has made to me of her flight con­founds me; though it seems in­con­sist­ent with the friend­ship between us; I can­not for­get the dis­in­ter­ested warmth with which she al­ways op­posed my tak­ing the veil.  She wished to see me mar­ried, though my dower would have been a loss to her and my brother’s chil­dren.  For her sake I will be­lieve well of this young peas­ant.”

“Then you do think there is some lik­ing between them,” said Bi­anca.  While she was speak­ing, a ser­vant came hast­ily into the cham­ber and told the Prin­cess that the Lady Isa­bella was found.

“Where?” said Mat­ilda.

“She has taken sanc­tu­ary in St. Nich­olas’s church,” replied the ser­vant; “Father Jerome has brought the news him­self; he is be­low with his High­ness.”

“Where is my mother?” said Mat­ilda.

“She is in her own cham­ber, Madam, and has asked for you.”

Man­fred had risen at the first dawn of light, and gone to Hip­pol­ita’s apart­ment, to in­quire if she knew aught of Isa­bella.  While he was ques­tion­ing her, word was brought that Jerome de­man­ded to speak with him.  Man­fred, little sus­pect­ing the cause of the friar’s ar­rival, and know­ing he was em­ployed by Hip­pol­ita in her char­it­ies, ordered him to be ad­mit­ted, in­tend­ing to leave them to­gether, while he pur­sued his search after Isa­bella.

“Is your busi­ness with me or the Prin­cess?” said Man­fred.

“With both,” replied the holy man.  “The Lady Isa­bella—”

“What of her?” in­ter­rup­ted Man­fred, eagerly.

“Is at St. Nich­olas’s al­tar,” replied Jerome.

“That is no busi­ness of Hip­pol­ita,” said Man­fred with con­fu­sion; “let us re­tire to my cham­ber, Father, and in­form me how she came thither.”

“No, my Lord,” replied the good man, with an air of firm­ness and au­thor­ity, that daun­ted even the res­ol­ute Man­fred, who could not help rever­ing the saint­like vir­tues of Jerome; “my com­mis­sion is to both, and with your High­ness’s good-lik­ing, in the pres­ence of both I shall de­liver it; but first, my Lord, I must in­ter­rog­ate the Prin­cess, whether she is ac­quain­ted with the cause of the Lady Isa­bella’s re­tire­ment from your castle.”

“No, on my soul,” said Hip­pol­ita; “does Isa­bella charge me with be­ing privy to it?”

“Father,” in­ter­rup­ted Man­fred, “I pay due rev­er­ence to your holy pro­fes­sion; but I am sov­er­eign here, and will al­low no med­dling priest to in­ter­fere in the af­fairs of my do­mestic.  If you have aught to say at­tend me to my cham­ber; I do not use to let my wife be ac­quain­ted with the secret af­fairs of my state; they are not within a wo­man’s province.”

“My Lord,” said the holy man, “I am no in­truder into the secrets of fam­il­ies.  My of­fice is to pro­mote peace, to heal di­vi­sions, to preach re­pent­ance, and teach man­kind to curb their head­strong pas­sions.  I for­give your High­ness’s un­char­it­able apo­strophe; I know my duty, and am the min­is­ter of a migh­tier prince than Man­fred.  Hearken to him who speaks through my or­gans.”

Man­fred trembled with rage and shame.  Hip­pol­ita’s coun­ten­ance de­clared her as­ton­ish­ment and im­pa­tience to know where this would end.  Her si­lence more strongly spoke her ob­serv­ance of Man­fred.

“The Lady Isa­bella,” re­sumed Jerome, “com­mends her­self to both your High­nesses; she thanks both for the kind­ness with which she has been treated in your castle: she de­plores the loss of your son, and her own mis­for­tune in not be­com­ing the daugh­ter of such wise and noble Princes, whom she shall al­ways re­spect as par­ents; she prays for un­in­ter­rup­ted union and fe­li­city between you” (Man­fred’s col­our changed): “but as it is no longer pos­sible for her to be al­lied to you, she en­treats your con­sent to re­main in sanc­tu­ary, till she can learn news of her father, or, by the cer­tainty of his death, be at liberty, with the ap­prob­a­tion of her guard­i­ans, to dis­pose of her­self in suit­able mar­riage.”

“I shall give no such con­sent,” said the Prince, “but in­sist on her re­turn to the castle without delay: I am an­swer­able for her per­son to her guard­i­ans, and will not brook her be­ing in any hands but my own.”

“Your High­ness will re­col­lect whether that can any longer be proper,” replied the friar.

“I want no mon­itor,” said Man­fred, col­our­ing; “Isa­bella’s con­duct leaves room for strange sus­pi­cions—and that young vil­lain, who was at least the ac­com­plice of her flight, if not the cause of it—”

“The cause!” in­ter­rup­ted Jerome; “was a young man the cause?”

“This is not to be borne!” cried Man­fred.  “Am I to be bearded in my own palace by an in­solent monk?  Thou art privy, I guess, to their amours.”

“I would pray to heaven to clear up your un­char­it­able sur­mises,” said Jerome, “if your High­ness were not sat­is­fied in your con­science how un­justly you ac­cuse me.  I do pray to heaven to par­don that un­char­it­able­ness: and I im­plore your High­ness to leave the Prin­cess at peace in that holy place, where she is not li­able to be dis­turbed by such vain and worldly fantas­ies as dis­courses of love from any man.”

“Cant not to me,” said Man­fred, “but re­turn and bring the Prin­cess to her duty.”

“It is my duty to pre­vent her re­turn hither,” said Jerome.  “She is where orphans and vir­gins are safest from the snares and wiles of this world; and noth­ing but a par­ent’s au­thor­ity shall take her thence.”

“I am her par­ent,” cried Man­fred, “and de­mand her.”

“She wished to have you for her par­ent,” said the friar; “but Heaven that for­bad that con­nec­tion has forever dis­solved all ties betwixt you: and I an­nounce to your High­ness—”

“Stop! au­da­cious man,” said Man­fred, “and dread my dis­pleas­ure.”

“Holy Father,” said Hip­pol­ita, “it is your of­fice to be no re­specter of per­sons: you must speak as your duty pre­scribes: but it is my duty to hear noth­ing that it pleases not my Lord I should hear.  At­tend the Prince to his cham­ber.  I will re­tire to my oratory, and pray to the blessed Vir­gin to in­spire you with her holy coun­sels, and to re­store the heart of my gra­cious Lord to its wonted peace and gen­tle­ness.”

“Ex­cel­lent wo­man!” said the friar.  “My Lord, I at­tend your pleas­ure.”

Man­fred, ac­com­pan­ied by the friar, passed to his own apart­ment, where shut­ting the door, “I per­ceive, Father,” said he, “that Isa­bella has ac­quain­ted you with my pur­pose.  Now hear my re­solve, and obey.  Reasons of state, most ur­gent reas­ons, my own and the safety of my people, de­mand that I should have a son.  It is in vain to ex­pect an heir from Hip­pol­ita.  I have made choice of Isa­bella.  You must bring her back; and you must do more.  I know the in­flu­ence you have with Hip­pol­ita: her con­science is in your hands.  She is, I al­low, a fault­less wo­man: her soul is set on heaven, and scorns the little grandeur of this world: you can with­draw her from it en­tirely.  Per­suade her to con­sent to the dis­sol­u­tion of our mar­riage, and to re­tire into a mon­as­tery—she shall en­dow one if she will; and she shall have the means of be­ing as lib­eral to your or­der as she or you can wish.  Thus you will di­vert the calam­it­ies that are hanging over our heads, and have the merit of say­ing the prin­cip­al­ity of Otranto from de­struc­tion.  You are a prudent man, and though the warmth of my tem­per be­trayed me into some un­be­com­ing ex­pres­sions, I hon­our your vir­tue, and wish to be in­debted to you for the re­pose of my life and the pre­ser­va­tion of my fam­ily.”

“The will of heaven be done!” said the friar.  “I am but its worth­less in­stru­ment.  It makes use of my tongue to tell thee, Prince, of thy un­war­rant­able designs.  The in­jur­ies of the vir­tu­ous Hip­pol­ita have moun­ted to the throne of pity.  By me thou art rep­rim­anded for thy adul­ter­ous in­ten­tion of re­pu­di­at­ing her: by me thou art warned not to pur­sue the in­ces­tu­ous design on thy con­trac­ted daugh­ter.  Heaven that de­livered her from thy fury, when the judg­ments so re­cently fallen on thy house ought to have in­spired thee with other thoughts, will con­tinue to watch over her.  Even I, a poor and des­pised friar, am able to pro­tect her from thy vi­ol­ence—I, sin­ner as I am, and un­char­it­ably re­viled by your High­ness as an ac­com­plice of I know not what amours, scorn the al­lure­ments with which it has pleased thee to tempt mine hon­esty.  I love my or­der; I hon­our de­vout souls; I re­spect the piety of thy Prin­cess—but I will not be­tray the con­fid­ence she re­poses in me, nor serve even the cause of re­li­gion by foul and sin­ful com­pli­ances—but for­sooth! the wel­fare of the state de­pends on your High­ness hav­ing a son!  Heaven mocks the short­sighted views of man.  But yes­ter-morn, whose house was so great, so flour­ish­ing as Man­fred’s?—where is young Con­rad now?—My Lord, I re­spect your tears—but I mean not to check them—let them flow, Prince!  They will weigh more with heaven to­ward the wel­fare of thy sub­jects, than a mar­riage, which, foun­ded on lust or policy, could never prosper.  The sceptre, which passed from the race of Alf­onso to thine, can­not be pre­served by a match which the church will never al­low.  If it is the will of the Most High that Man­fred’s name must per­ish, resign your­self, my Lord, to its de­crees; and thus de­serve a crown that can never pass away.  Come, my Lord; I like this sor­row—let us re­turn to the Prin­cess: she is not ap­prised of your cruel in­ten­tions; nor did I mean more than to alarm you.  You saw with what gentle pa­tience, with what ef­forts of love, she heard, she re­jec­ted hear­ing, the ex­tent of your guilt.  I know she longs to fold you in her arms, and as­sure you of her un­al­ter­able af­fec­tion.”

“Father,” said the Prince, “you mis­take my com­punc­tion: true, I hon­our Hip­pol­ita’s vir­tues; I think her a saint; and wish it were for my soul’s health to tie faster the knot that has united us—but alas! Father, you know not the bitterest of my pangs! it is some time that I have had scruples on the leg­al­ity of our union: Hip­pol­ita is re­lated to me in the fourth de­gree—it is true, we had a dis­pens­a­tion: but I have been in­formed that she had also been con­trac­ted to an­other.  This it is that sits heavy at my heart: to this state of un­law­ful wed­lock I im­pute the vis­it­a­tion that has fallen on me in the death of Con­rad!—ease my con­science of this bur­den: dis­solve our mar­riage, and ac­com­plish the work of god­li­ness—which your di­vine ex­horta­tions have com­menced in my soul.”

How cut­ting was the an­guish which the good man felt, when he per­ceived this turn in the wily Prince!  He trembled for Hip­pol­ita, whose ruin he saw was de­term­ined; and he feared if Man­fred had no hope of re­cov­er­ing Isa­bella, that his im­pa­tience for a son would dir­ect him to some other ob­ject, who might not be equally proof against the tempta­tion of Man­fred’s rank.  For some time the holy man re­mained ab­sorbed in thought.  At length, con­ceiv­ing some hopes from delay, he thought the wisest con­duct would be to pre­vent the Prince from des­pair­ing of re­cov­er­ing Isa­bella.  Her the friar knew he could dis­pose, from her af­fec­tion to Hip­pol­ita, and from the aver­sion she had ex­pressed to him for Man­fred’s ad­dresses, to second his views, till the cen­sures of the church could be ful­min­ated against a di­vorce.  With this in­ten­tion, as if struck with the Prince’s scruples, he at length said:

“My Lord, I have been pon­der­ing on what your High­ness has said; and if in truth it is del­ic­acy of con­science that is the real motive of your re­pug­nance to your vir­tu­ous Lady, far be it from me to en­deav­our to harden your heart.  The church is an in­dul­gent mother: un­fold your griefs to her: she alone can ad­min­is­ter com­fort to your soul, either by sat­is­fy­ing your con­science, or upon ex­am­in­a­tion of your scruples, by set­ting you at liberty, and in­dul­ging you in the law­ful means of con­tinu­ing your lin­eage.  In the lat­ter case, if the Lady Isa­bella can be brought to con­sent—”

Man­fred, who con­cluded that he had either over­reached the good man, or that his first warmth had been but a trib­ute paid to ap­pear­ance, was over­joyed at this sud­den turn, and re­peated the most mag­ni­fi­cent prom­ises, if he should suc­ceed by the friar’s me­di­ation.  The well-mean­ing priest suffered him to de­ceive him­self, fully de­term­ined to tra­verse his views, in­stead of second­ing them.

“Since we now un­der­stand one an­other,” re­sumed the Prince, “I ex­pect, Father, that you sat­isfy me in one point.  Who is the youth that I found in the vault?  He must have been privy to Isa­bella’s flight: tell me truly, is he her lover? or is he an agent for an­other’s pas­sion?  I have of­ten sus­pec­ted Isa­bella’s in­dif­fer­ence to my son: a thou­sand cir­cum­stances crowd on my mind that con­firm that sus­pi­cion.  She her­self was so con­scious of it, that while I dis­coursed her in the gal­lery, she out­ran my sus­pi­cious, and en­deav­oured to jus­tify her­self from cool­ness to Con­rad.”

The friar, who knew noth­ing of the youth, but what he had learnt oc­ca­sion­ally from the Prin­cess, ig­nor­ant what was be­come of him, and not suf­fi­ciently re­flect­ing on the im­petu­os­ity of Man­fred’s tem­per, con­ceived that it might not be amiss to sow the seeds of jeal­ousy in his mind: they might be turned to some use here­after, either by pre­ju­dicing the Prince against Isa­bella, if he per­sisted in that union; or by di­vert­ing his at­ten­tion to a wrong scent, and em­ploy­ing his thoughts on a vis­ion­ary in­trigue, pre­vent his en­ga­ging in any new pur­suit.  With this un­happy policy, he answered in a man­ner to con­firm Man­fred in the be­lief of some con­nec­tion between Isa­bella and the youth.  The Prince, whose pas­sions wanted little fuel to throw them into a blaze, fell into a rage at the idea of what the friar sug­ges­ted.

“I will fathom to the bot­tom of this in­trigue,” cried he; and quit­ting Jerome ab­ruptly, with a com­mand to re­main there till his re­turn, he hastened to the great hall of the castle, and ordered the peas­ant to be brought be­fore him.

“Thou hardened young im­postor!” said the Prince, as soon as he saw the youth; “what be­comes of thy boas­ted vera­city now? it was Provid­ence, was it, and the light of the moon, that dis­covered the lock of the trap-door to thee?  Tell me, au­da­cious boy, who thou art, and how long thou hast been ac­quain­ted with the Prin­cess—and take care to an­swer with less equi­voc­a­tion than thou didst last night, or tor­tures shall wring the truth from thee.”

The young man, per­ceiv­ing that his share in the flight of the Prin­cess was dis­covered, and con­clud­ing that any­thing he should say could no longer be of any ser­vice or det­ri­ment to her, replied—

“I am no im­postor, my Lord, nor have I de­served op­pro­bri­ous lan­guage.  I answered to every ques­tion your High­ness put to me last night with the same vera­city that I shall speak now: and that will not be from fear of your tor­tures, but be­cause my soul ab­hors a false­hood.  Please to re­peat your ques­tions, my Lord; I am ready to give you all the sat­is­fac­tion in my power.”

“You know my ques­tions,” replied the Prince, “and only want time to pre­pare an eva­sion.  Speak dir­ectly; who art thou? and how long hast thou been known to the Prin­cess?”

“I am a la­bourer at the next vil­lage,” said the peas­ant; “my name is Theodore.  The Prin­cess found me in the vault last night: be­fore that hour I never was in her pres­ence.”

“I may be­lieve as much or as little as I please of this,” said Man­fred; “but I will hear thy own story be­fore I ex­am­ine into the truth of it.  Tell me, what reason did the Prin­cess give thee for mak­ing her es­cape? thy life de­pends on thy an­swer.”

“She told me,” replied Theodore, “that she was on the brink of de­struc­tion, and that if she could not es­cape from the castle, she was in danger in a few mo­ments of be­ing made miser­able forever.”

“And on this slight found­a­tion, on a silly girl’s re­port,” said Man­fred, “thou didst haz­ard my dis­pleas­ure?”

“I fear no man’s dis­pleas­ure,” said Theodore, “when a wo­man in dis­tress puts her­self un­der my pro­tec­tion.”

Dur­ing this ex­am­in­a­tion, Mat­ilda was go­ing to the apart­ment of Hip­pol­ita.  At the up­per end of the hall, where Man­fred sat, was a boarded gal­lery with lat­ticed win­dows, through which Mat­ilda and Bi­anca were to pass.  Hear­ing her father’s voice, and see­ing the ser­vants as­sembled round him, she stopped to learn the oc­ca­sion.  The pris­oner soon drew her at­ten­tion: the steady and com­posed man­ner in which he answered, and the gal­lantry of his last reply, which were the first words she heard dis­tinctly, in­ter­ested her in his fla­vour.  His per­son was noble, hand­some, and com­mand­ing, even in that situ­ation: but his coun­ten­ance soon en­grossed her whole care.

“Heavens!  Bi­anca,” said the Prin­cess softly, “do I dream? or is not that youth the ex­act re­semb­lance of Alf­onso’s pic­ture in the gal­lery?”

She could say no more, for her father’s voice grew louder at every word.

“This bravado,” said he, “sur­passes all thy former in­solence.  Thou shalt ex­per­i­ence the wrath with which thou darest to trifle.  Seize him,” con­tin­ued Man­fred, “and bind him—the first news the Prin­cess hears of her cham­pion shall be, that he has lost his head for her sake.”

“The in­justice of which thou art guilty to­wards me,” said Theodore, “con­vinces me that I have done a good deed in de­liv­er­ing the Prin­cess from thy tyranny.  May she be happy, whatever be­comes of me!”

“This is a lover!” cried Man­fred in a rage: “a peas­ant within sight of death is not an­im­ated by such sen­ti­ments.  Tell me, tell me, rash boy, who thou art, or the rack shall force thy secret from thee.”

“Thou hast threatened me with death already,” said the youth, “for the truth I have told thee: if that is all the en­cour­age­ment I am to ex­pect for sin­cer­ity, I am not temp­ted to in­dulge thy vain curi­os­ity farther.”

“Then thou wilt not speak?” said Man­fred.

“I will not,” replied he.

“Bear him away into the court­yard,” said Man­fred; “I will see his head this in­stant severed from his body.”

Mat­ilda fain­ted at hear­ing those words.  Bi­anca shrieked, and cried—

“Help! help! the Prin­cess is dead!”  Man­fred star­ted at this ejac­u­la­tion, and de­man­ded what was the mat­ter!  The young peas­ant, who heard it too, was struck with hor­ror, and asked eagerly the same ques­tion; but Man­fred ordered him to be hur­ried into the court, and kept there for ex­e­cu­tion, till he had in­formed him­self of the cause of Bi­anca’s shrieks.  When he learned the mean­ing, he treated it as a wo­man­ish panic, and or­der­ing Mat­ilda to be car­ried to her apart­ment, he rushed into the court, and call­ing for one of his guards, bade Theodore kneel down, and pre­pare to re­ceive the fatal blow.

The un­daun­ted youth re­ceived the bit­ter sen­tence with a resig­na­tion that touched every heart but Man­fred’s.  He wished earn­estly to know the mean­ing of the words he had heard re­lat­ing to the Prin­cess; but fear­ing to ex­as­per­ate the tyr­ant more against her, he de­sisted.  The only boon he deigned to ask was, that he might be per­mit­ted to have a con­fessor, and make his peace with heaven.  Man­fred, who hoped by the con­fessor’s means to come at the youth’s his­tory, read­ily gran­ted his re­quest; and be­ing con­vinced that Father Jerome was now in his in­terest, he ordered him to be called and shrive the pris­oner.  The holy man, who had little fore­seen the cata­strophe that his im­prudence oc­ca­sioned, fell on his knees to the Prince, and ad­jured him in the most sol­emn man­ner not to shed in­no­cent blood.  He ac­cused him­self in the bitterest terms for his in­dis­cre­tion, en­deav­oured to dis­culp­ate the youth, and left no method un­tried to soften the tyr­ant’s rage.  Man­fred, more in­censed than ap­peased by Jerome’s in­ter­ces­sion, whose re­trac­tion now made him sus­pect he had been im­posed upon by both, com­manded the friar to do his duty, telling him he would not al­low the pris­oner many minutes for con­fes­sion.

“Nor do I ask many, my Lord,” said the un­happy young man.  “My sins, thank heaven, have not been nu­mer­ous; nor ex­ceed what might be ex­pec­ted at my years.  Dry your tears, good Father, and let us des­patch.  This is a bad world; nor have I had cause to leave it with re­gret.”

“Oh wretched youth!” said Jerome; “how canst thou bear the sight of me with pa­tience?  I am thy mur­derer! it is I have brought this dis­mal hour upon thee!”

“I for­give thee from my soul,” said the youth, “as I hope heaven will par­don me.  Hear my con­fes­sion, Father; and give me thy bless­ing.”

“How can I pre­pare thee for thy pas­sage as I ought?” said Jerome.  “Thou canst not be saved without par­don­ing thy foes—and canst thou for­give that im­pi­ous man there?”

“I can,” said Theodore; “I do.”

“And does not this touch thee, cruel Prince?” said the friar.

“I sent for thee to con­fess him,” said Man­fred, sternly; “not to plead for him.  Thou didst first in­cense me against him—his blood be upon thy head!”

“It will! it will!” said the good man, in an agony of sor­row.  “Thou and I must never hope to go where this blessed youth is go­ing!”

“Despatch!” said Man­fred; “I am no more to be moved by the whin­ing of priests than by the shrieks of wo­men.”

“What!” said the youth; “is it pos­sible that my fate could have oc­ca­sioned what I heard!  Is the Prin­cess then again in thy power?”

“Thou dost but re­mem­ber me of my wrath,” said Man­fred.  “Pre­pare thee, for this mo­ment is thy last.”

The youth, who felt his in­dig­na­tion rise, and who was touched with the sor­row which he saw he had in­fused into all the spec­tat­ors, as well as into the friar, sup­pressed his emo­tions, and put­ting off his doublet, and un­but­ton­ing his col­lar, knelt down to his pray­ers.  As he stooped, his shirt slipped down be­low his shoulder, and dis­covered the mark of a bloody ar­row.

“Gra­cious heaven!” cried the holy man, start­ing; “what do I see?  It is my child! my Theodore!”

The pas­sions that en­sued must be con­ceived; they can­not be painted.  The tears of the as­sist­ants were sus­pen­ded by won­der, rather than stopped by joy.  They seemed to in­quire in the eyes of their Lord what they ought to feel.  Sur­prise, doubt, ten­der­ness, re­spect, suc­ceeded each other in the coun­ten­ance of the youth.  He re­ceived with mod­est sub­mis­sion the ef­fu­sion of the old man’s tears and em­braces.  Yet afraid of giv­ing a loose to hope, and sus­pect­ing from what had passed the in­flex­ib­il­ity of Man­fred’s tem­per, he cast a glance to­wards the Prince, as if to say, canst thou be un­moved at such a scene as this?

Man­fred’s heart was cap­able of be­ing touched.  He for­got his an­ger in his as­ton­ish­ment; yet his pride for­bad his own­ing him­self af­fected.  He even doubted whether this dis­cov­ery was not a con­triv­ance of the friar to save the youth.

“What may this mean?” said he.  “How can he be thy son?  Is it con­sist­ent with thy pro­fes­sion or re­puted sanc­tity to avow a peas­ant’s off­spring for the fruit of thy ir­reg­u­lar amours!”

“Oh, God!” said the holy man, “dost thou ques­tion his be­ing mine?  Could I feel the an­guish I do if I were not his father?  Spare him! good Prince! spare him! and re­vile me as thou pleasest.”

“Spare him! spare him!” cried the at­tend­ants; “for this good man’s sake!”

“Peace!” said Man­fred, sternly.  “I must know more ere I am dis­posed to par­don.  A saint’s bas­tard may be no saint him­self.”

“In­jur­i­ous Lord!” said Theodore, “add not in­sult to cruelty.  If I am this ven­er­able man’s son, though no Prince, as thou art, know the blood that flows in my veins—”

“Yes,” said the friar, in­ter­rupt­ing him, “his blood is noble; nor is he that ab­ject thing, my Lord, you speak him.  He is my law­ful son, and Si­cily can boast of few houses more an­cient than that of Fal­con­ara.  But alas! my Lord, what is blood! what is no­bil­ity!  We are all rep­tiles, miser­able, sin­ful creatures.  It is piety alone that can dis­tin­guish us from the dust whence we sprung, and whither we must re­turn.”

“Truce to your ser­mon,” said Man­fred; “you for­get you are no longer Friar Jerome, but the Count of Fal­con­ara.  Let me know your his­tory; you will have time to mor­al­ise here­after, if you should not hap­pen to ob­tain the grace of that sturdy crim­inal there.”

“Mother of God!” said the friar, “is it pos­sible my Lord can re­fuse a father the life of his only, his long-lost, child!  Trample me, my Lord, scorn, af­flict me, ac­cept my life for his, but spare my son!”

“Thou canst feel, then,” said Man­fred, “what it is to lose an only son!  A little hour ago thou didst preach up resig­na­tion to me: my house, if fate so pleased, must per­ish—but the Count of Fal­con­ara—”

“Alas! my Lord,” said Jerome, “I con­fess I have of­fen­ded; but ag­grav­ate not an old man’s suf­fer­ings!  I boast not of my fam­ily, nor think of such van­it­ies—it is nature, that pleads for this boy; it is the memory of the dear wo­man that bore him.  Is she, Theodore, is she dead?”

“Her soul has long been with the blessed,” said Theodore.

“Oh! how?” cried Jerome, “tell me—no—she is happy!  Thou art all my care now!—Most dread Lord! will you—will you grant me my poor boy’s life?”

“Return to thy con­vent,” answered Man­fred; “con­duct the Prin­cess hither; obey me in what else thou know­est; and I prom­ise thee the life of thy son.”

“Oh! my Lord,” said Jerome, “is my hon­esty the price I must pay for this dear youth’s safety?”

“For me!” cried Theodore.  “Let me die a thou­sand deaths, rather than stain thy con­science.  What is it the tyr­ant would ex­act of thee?  Is the Prin­cess still safe from his power?  Pro­tect her, thou ven­er­able old man; and let all the weight of his wrath fall on me.”

Jerome en­deav­oured to check the im­petu­os­ity of the youth; and ere Man­fred could reply, the tramp­ling of horses was heard, and a brazen trum­pet, which hung without the gate of the castle, was sud­denly soun­ded.  At the same in­stant the sable plumes on the en­chanted hel­met, which still re­mained at the other end of the court, were tem­pes­tu­ously agit­ated, and nod­ded thrice, as if bowed by some in­vis­ible wearer.

III

Man­fred’s heart mis­gave him when he be­held the plumage on the mi­ra­cu­lous casque shaken in con­cert with the sound­ing of the brazen trum­pet.

“Father!” said he to Jerome, whom he now ceased to treat as Count of Fal­con­ara, “what mean these portents?  If I have of­fen­ded—” the plumes were shaken with greater vi­ol­ence than be­fore.

“Un­happy Prince that I am,” cried Man­fred.  “Holy Father! will you not as­sist me with your pray­ers?”

“My Lord,” replied Jerome, “heaven is no doubt dis­pleased with your mock­ery of its ser­vants.  Sub­mit your­self to the church; and cease to per­se­cute her min­is­ters.  Dis­miss this in­no­cent youth; and learn to re­spect the holy char­ac­ter I wear.  Heaven will not be trifled with: you see—” the trum­pet soun­ded again.

“I ac­know­ledge I have been too hasty,” said Man­fred.  “Father, do you go to the wicket, and de­mand who is at the gate.”

“Do you grant me the life of Theodore?” replied the friar.

“I do,” said Man­fred; “but in­quire who is without!”

Jerome, fall­ing on the neck of his son, dis­charged a flood of tears, that spoke the ful­ness of his soul.

“You prom­ised to go to the gate,” said Man­fred.

“I thought,” replied the friar, “your High­ness would ex­cuse my thank­ing you first in this trib­ute of my heart.”

“Go, dearest Sir,” said Theodore; “obey the Prince.  I do not de­serve that you should delay his sat­is­fac­tion for me.”

Jerome, in­quir­ing who was without, was answered, “A her­ald.”

“From whom?” said he.

“From the Knight of the Gigantic Sabre,” said the her­ald; “and I must speak with the usurper of Otranto.”

Jerome re­turned to the Prince, and did not fail to re­peat the mes­sage in the very words it had been uttered.  The first sounds struck Man­fred with ter­ror; but when he heard him­self styled usurper, his rage re­kindled, and all his cour­age re­vived.

“Usurper!—in­solent vil­lain!” cried he; “who dares to ques­tion my title?  Re­tire, Father; this is no busi­ness for monks: I will meet this pre­sump­tu­ous man my­self.  Go to your con­vent and pre­pare the Prin­cess’s re­turn.  Your son shall be a host­age for your fi­del­ity: his life de­pends on your obed­i­ence.”

“Good heaven! my Lord,” cried Jerome, “your High­ness did but this in­stant freely par­don my child—have you so soon for­got the in­ter­pos­i­tion of heaven?”

“Heaven,” replied Man­fred, “does not send her­alds to ques­tion the title of a law­ful Prince.  I doubt whether it even no­ti­fies its will through fri­ars—but that is your af­fair, not mine.  At present you know my pleas­ure; and it is not a saucy her­ald that shall save your son, if you do not re­turn with the Prin­cess.”

It was in vain for the holy man to reply.  Man­fred com­manded him to be con­duc­ted to the postern-gate, and shut out from the castle.  And he ordered some of his at­tend­ants to carry Theodore to the top of the black tower, and guard him strictly; scarce per­mit­ting the father and son to ex­change a hasty em­brace at part­ing.  He then with­drew to the hall, and seat­ing him­self in princely state, ordered the her­ald to be ad­mit­ted to his pres­ence.

“Well! thou in­solent!” said the Prince, “what wouldst thou with me?”

“I come,” replied he, “to thee, Man­fred, usurper of the prin­cip­al­ity of Otranto, from the renowned and in­vin­cible knight, the Knight of the Gigantic Sabre: in the name of his Lord, Fre­deric, Mar­quis of Vi­cenza, he de­mands the Lady Isa­bella, daugh­ter of that Prince, whom thou hast basely and trait­or­ously got into thy power, by brib­ing her false guard­i­ans dur­ing his ab­sence; and he re­quires thee to resign the prin­cip­al­ity of Otranto, which thou hast usurped from the said Lord Fre­deric, the nearest of blood to the last right­ful Lord, Alf­onso the Good.  If thou dost not in­stantly com­ply with these just de­mands, he de­fies thee to single com­bat to the last ex­tremity.”  And so say­ing the her­ald cast down his warder.

“And where is this brag­gart who sends thee?” said Man­fred.

“At the dis­tance of a league,” said the her­ald: “he comes to make good his Lord’s claim against thee, as he is a true knight, and thou an usurper and rav­isher.”

In­jur­i­ous as this chal­lenge was, Man­fred re­flec­ted that it was not his in­terest to pro­voke the Mar­quis.  He knew how well foun­ded the claim of Fre­deric was; nor was this the first time he had heard of it.  Fre­deric’s an­cest­ors had as­sumed the style of Princes of Otranto, from the death of Alf­onso the Good without is­sue; but Man­fred, his father, and grand­father, had been too power­ful for the house of Vi­cenza to dis­pos­sess them.  Fre­deric, a mar­tial and amor­ous young Prince, had mar­ried a beau­ti­ful young lady, of whom he was en­am­oured, and who had died in child­bed of Isa­bella.  Her death af­fected him so much that he had taken the cross and gone to the Holy Land, where he was wounded in an en­gage­ment against the in­fi­dels, made pris­oner, and re­por­ted to be dead.  When the news reached Man­fred’s ears, he bribed the guard­i­ans of the Lady Isa­bella to de­liver her up to him as a bride for his son Con­rad, by which al­li­ance he had pro­posed to unite the claims of the two houses.  This motive, on Con­rad’s death, had co­oper­ated to make him so sud­denly re­solve on es­pous­ing her him­self; and the same re­flec­tion de­term­ined him now to en­deav­our at ob­tain­ing the con­sent of Fre­deric to this mar­riage.  A like policy in­spired him with the thought of in­vit­ing Fre­deric’s cham­pion into the castle, lest he should be in­formed of Isa­bella’s flight, which he strictly en­joined his do­mest­ics not to dis­close to any of the knight’s ret­inue.

“Her­ald,” said Man­fred, as soon as he had di­ges­ted these re­flec­tions, “re­turn to thy mas­ter, and tell him, ere we li­quid­ate our dif­fer­ences by the sword, Man­fred would hold some con­verse with him.  Bid him wel­come to my castle, where by my faith, as I am a true knight, he shall have cour­teous re­cep­tion, and full se­cur­ity for him­self and fol­low­ers.  If we can­not ad­just our quar­rel by am­ic­able means, I swear he shall de­part in safety, and shall have full sat­is­fac­tion ac­cord­ing to the laws of arms: So help me God and His holy Trin­ity!”

The her­ald made three obeis­ances and re­tired.

Dur­ing this in­ter­view Jerome’s mind was agit­ated by a thou­sand con­trary pas­sions.  He trembled for the life of his son, and his first thought was to per­suade Isa­bella to re­turn to the castle.  Yet he was scarce less alarmed at the thought of her union with Man­fred.  He dreaded Hip­pol­ita’s un­boun­ded sub­mis­sion to the will of her Lord; and though he did not doubt but he could alarm her piety not to con­sent to a di­vorce, if he could get ac­cess to her; yet should Man­fred dis­cover that the ob­struc­tion came from him, it might be equally fatal to Theodore.  He was im­pa­tient to know whence came the her­ald, who with so little man­age­ment had ques­tioned the title of Man­fred: yet he did not dare ab­sent him­self from the con­vent, lest Isa­bella should leave it, and her flight be im­puted to him.  He re­turned dis­con­sol­ately to the mon­as­tery, un­cer­tain on what con­duct to re­solve.  A monk, who met him in the porch and ob­served his mel­an­choly air, said—

“Alas! brother, is it then true that we have lost our ex­cel­lent Prin­cess Hip­pol­ita?”

The holy man star­ted, and cried, “What mean­est thou, brother?  I come this in­stant from the castle, and left her in per­fect health.”

“Mar­telli,” replied the other friar, “passed by the con­vent but a quarter of an hour ago on his way from the castle, and re­por­ted that her High­ness was dead.  All our brethren are gone to the chapel to pray for her happy transit to a bet­ter life, and willed me to wait thy ar­rival.  They know thy holy at­tach­ment to that good Lady, and are anxious for the af­flic­tion it will cause in thee—in­deed we have all reason to weep; she was a mother to our house.  But this life is but a pil­grim­age; we must not mur­mur—we shall all fol­low her!  May our end be like hers!”

“Good brother, thou dreamest,” said Jerome.  “I tell thee I come from the castle, and left the Prin­cess well.  Where is the Lady Isa­bella?”

“Poor Gen­tle­wo­man!” replied the friar; “I told her the sad news, and offered her spir­itual com­fort.  I re­minded her of the trans­it­ory con­di­tion of mor­tal­ity, and ad­vised her to take the veil: I quoted the ex­ample of the holy Prin­cess San­chia of Ar­ragon.”

“Thy zeal was laud­able,” said Jerome, im­pa­tiently; “but at present it was un­ne­ces­sary: Hip­pol­ita is well—at least I trust in the Lord she is; I heard noth­ing to the con­trary—yet, me­thinks, the Prince’s earn­est­ness—Well, brother, but where is the Lady Isa­bella?”

“I know not,” said the friar; “she wept much, and said she would re­tire to her cham­ber.”

Jerome left his com­rade ab­ruptly, and hastened to the Prin­cess, but she was not in her cham­ber.  He in­quired of the do­mest­ics of the con­vent, but could learn no news of her.  He searched in vain through­out the mon­as­tery and the church, and des­patched mes­sen­gers round the neigh­bour­hood, to get in­tel­li­gence if she had been seen; but to no pur­pose.  Noth­ing could equal the good man’s per­plex­ity.  He judged that Isa­bella, sus­pect­ing Man­fred of hav­ing pre­cip­it­ated his wife’s death, had taken the alarm, and with­drawn her­self to some more secret place of con­ceal­ment.  This new flight would prob­ably carry the Prince’s fury to the height.  The re­port of Hip­pol­ita’s death, though it seemed al­most in­cred­ible, in­creased his con­sterna­tion; and though Isa­bella’s es­cape be­spoke her aver­sion of Man­fred for a hus­band, Jerome could feel no com­fort from it, while it en­dangered the life of his son.  He de­term­ined to re­turn to the castle, and made sev­eral of his brethren ac­com­pany him to at­test his in­no­cence to Man­fred, and, if ne­ces­sary, join their in­ter­ces­sion with his for Theodore.

The Prince, in the mean­time, had passed into the court, and ordered the gates of the castle to be flung open for the re­cep­tion of the stranger knight and his train.  In a few minutes the caval­cade ar­rived.  First came two har­bingers with wands.  Next a her­ald, fol­lowed by two pages and two trum­pets.  Then a hun­dred foot-guards.  These were at­ten­ded by as many horse.  After them fifty foot­men, clothed in scar­let and black, the col­ours of the knight.  Then a led horse.  Two her­alds on each side of a gen­tle­man on horse­back bear­ing a ban­ner with the arms of Vi­cenza and Otranto quarterly—a cir­cum­stance that much of­fen­ded Man­fred—but he stifled his re­sent­ment.  Two more pages.  The knight’s con­fessor telling his beads.  Fifty more foot­men clad as be­fore.  Two knights habited in com­plete ar­mour, their beavers down, com­rades to the prin­cipal knight.  The squires of the two knights, car­ry­ing their shields and devices.  The knight’s own squire.  A hun­dred gen­tle­men bear­ing an enorm­ous sword, and seem­ing to faint un­der the weight of it.  The knight him­self on a chest­nut steed, in com­plete ar­mour, his lance in the rest, his face en­tirely con­cealed by his vi­zor, which was sur­moun­ted by a large plume of scar­let and black feath­ers.  Fifty foot-guards with drums and trum­pets closed the pro­ces­sion, which wheeled off to the right and left to make room for the prin­cipal knight.

As soon as he ap­proached the gate he stopped; and the her­ald ad­van­cing, read again the words of the chal­lenge.  Man­fred’s eyes were fixed on the gi­gantic sword, and he scarce seemed to at­tend to the car­tel: but his at­ten­tion was soon di­ver­ted by a tem­pest of wind that rose be­hind him.  He turned and be­held the plumes of the en­chanted hel­met agit­ated in the same ex­traordin­ary man­ner as be­fore.  It re­quired in­trep­id­ity like Man­fred’s not to sink un­der a con­cur­rence of cir­cum­stances that seemed to an­nounce his fate.  Yet scorn­ing in the pres­ence of strangers to be­tray the cour­age he had al­ways mani­fes­ted, he said boldly—

“Sir Knight, who­ever thou art, I bid thee wel­come.  If thou art of mor­tal mould, thy valour shall meet its equal: and if thou art a true knight, thou wilt scorn to em­ploy sor­cery to carry thy point.  Be these omens from heaven or hell, Man­fred trusts to the right­eous­ness of his cause and to the aid of St. Nich­olas, who has ever pro­tec­ted his house.  Alight, Sir Knight, and re­pose thy­self.  To­mor­row thou shalt have a fair field, and heaven be­friend the juster side!”

The knight made no reply, but dis­mount­ing, was con­duc­ted by Man­fred to the great hall of the castle.  As they tra­versed the court, the knight stopped to gaze on the mi­ra­cu­lous casque; and kneel­ing down, seemed to pray in­wardly for some minutes.  Rising, he made a sign to the Prince to lead on.  As soon as they entered the hall, Man­fred pro­posed to the stranger to dis­arm, but the knight shook his head in token of re­fusal.

“Sir Knight,” said Man­fred, “this is not cour­teous, but by my good faith I will not cross thee, nor shalt thou have cause to com­plain of the Prince of Otranto.  No treach­ery is de­signed on my part; I hope none is in­ten­ded on thine; here take my gage” (giv­ing him his ring): “your friends and you shall en­joy the laws of hos­pit­al­ity.  Rest here un­til re­fresh­ments are brought.  I will but give or­ders for the ac­com­mod­a­tion of your train, and re­turn to you.”  The three knights bowed as ac­cept­ing his cour­tesy.  Man­fred dir­ec­ted the stranger’s ret­inue to be con­duc­ted to an ad­ja­cent hos­pital, foun­ded by the Prin­cess Hip­pol­ita for the re­cep­tion of pil­grims.  As they made the cir­cuit of the court to re­turn to­wards the gate, the gi­gantic sword burst from the sup­port­ers, and fall­ing to the ground op­pos­ite to the hel­met, re­mained im­mov­able.  Man­fred, al­most hardened to preter­nat­ural ap­pear­ances, sur­moun­ted the shock of this new prodigy; and re­turn­ing to the hall, where by this time the feast was ready, he in­vited his si­lent guests to take their places.  Man­fred, how­ever ill his heart was at ease, en­deav­oured to in­spire the com­pany with mirth.  He put sev­eral ques­tions to them, but was answered only by signs.  They raised their vi­zors but suf­fi­ciently to feed them­selves, and that spar­ingly.

“Sirs,” said the Prince, “ye are the first guests I ever treated within these walls who scorned to hold any in­ter­course with me: nor has it oft been cus­tom­ary, I ween, for princes to haz­ard their state and dig­nity against strangers and mutes.  You say you come in the name of Fre­deric of Vi­cenza; I have ever heard that he was a gal­lant and cour­teous knight; nor would he, I am bold to say, think it be­neath him to mix in so­cial con­verse with a Prince that is his equal, and not un­known by deeds in arms.  Still ye are si­lent—well! be it as it may—by the laws of hos­pit­al­ity and chiv­alry ye are mas­ters un­der this roof: ye shall do your pleas­ure.  But come, give me a gob­let of wine; ye will not re­fuse to pledge me to the healths of your fair mis­tresses.”

The prin­cipal knight sighed and crossed him­self, and was rising from the board.

“Sir Knight,” said Man­fred, “what I said was but in sport.  I shall con­strain you in noth­ing: use your good lik­ing.  Since mirth is not your mood, let us be sad.  Busi­ness may hit your fan­cies bet­ter.  Let us with­draw, and hear if what I have to un­fold may be bet­ter rel­ished than the vain ef­forts I have made for your pas­time.”

Man­fred then con­duct­ing the three knights into an in­ner cham­ber, shut the door, and in­vit­ing them to be seated, began thus, ad­dress­ing him­self to the chief per­son­age:—

“You come, Sir Knight, as I un­der­stand, in the name of the Mar­quis of Vi­cenza, to re-de­mand the Lady Isa­bella, his daugh­ter, who has been con­trac­ted in the face of Holy Church to my son, by the con­sent of her legal guard­i­ans; and to re­quire me to resign my domin­ions to your Lord, who gives him­self for the nearest of blood to Prince Alf­onso, whose soul God rest!  I shall speak to the lat­ter art­icle of your de­mands first.  You must know, your Lord knows, that I en­joy the prin­cip­al­ity of Otranto from my father, Don Manuel, as he re­ceived it from his father, Don Ri­cardo.  Alf­onso, their pre­de­cessor, dy­ing child­less in the Holy Land, be­queathed his es­tates to my grand­father, Don Ri­cardo, in con­sid­er­a­tion of his faith­ful ser­vices.”  The stranger shook his head.

“Sir Knight,” said Man­fred, warmly, “Ri­cardo was a vali­ant and up­right man; he was a pi­ous man; wit­ness his mu­ni­fi­cent found­a­tion of the ad­join­ing church and two con­vents.  He was pe­cu­li­arly pat­ron­ised by St. Nich­olas—my grand­father was in­cap­able—I say, Sir, Don Ri­cardo was in­cap­able—ex­cuse me, your in­ter­rup­tion has dis­ordered me.  I ven­er­ate the memory of my grand­father.  Well, Sirs, he held this es­tate; he held it by his good sword and by the fa­vour of St. Nich­olas—so did my father; and so, Sirs, will I, come what come will.  But Fre­deric, your Lord, is nearest in blood.  I have con­sen­ted to put my title to the is­sue of the sword.  Does that im­ply a vi­cious title?  I might have asked, where is Fre­deric your Lord?  Re­port speaks him dead in cap­tiv­ity.  You say, your ac­tions say, he lives—I ques­tion it not—I might, Sirs, I might—but I do not.  Other Princes would bid Fre­deric take his in­her­it­ance by force, if he can: they would not stake their dig­nity on a single com­bat: they would not sub­mit it to the de­cision of un­known mutes!—par­don me, gen­tle­men, I am too warm: but sup­pose yourselves in my situ­ation: as ye are stout knights, would it not move your choler to have your own and the hon­our of your an­cest­ors called in ques­tion?—But to the point.  Ye re­quire me to de­liver up the Lady Isa­bella.  Sirs, I must ask if ye are au­thor­ised to re­ceive her?”

The knight nod­ded.

“Re­ceive her,” con­tin­ued Man­fred; “well, you are au­thor­ised to re­ceive her, but, gentle knight, may I ask if you have full powers?”

The knight nod­ded.

“ ’Tis well,” said Man­fred; “then hear what I have to of­fer.  Ye see, gen­tle­men, be­fore you, the most un­happy of men!” (he began to weep); “af­ford me your com­pas­sion; I am en­titled to it, in­deed I am.  Know, I have lost my only hope, my joy, the sup­port of my house—Con­rad died yes­ter morn­ing.”

The knights dis­covered signs of sur­prise.

“Yes, Sirs, fate has dis­posed of my son.  Isa­bella is at liberty.”

“Do you then re­store her?” cried the chief knight, break­ing si­lence.

“Af­ford me your pa­tience,” said Man­fred.  “I re­joice to find, by this testi­mony of your good­will, that this mat­ter may be ad­jus­ted without blood.  It is no in­terest of mine dic­tates what little I have farther to say.  Ye be­hold in me a man dis­gus­ted with the world: the loss of my son has weaned me from earthly cares.  Power and great­ness have no longer any charms in my eyes.  I wished to trans­mit the sceptre I had re­ceived from my an­cest­ors with hon­our to my son—but that is over!  Life it­self is so in­dif­fer­ent to me, that I ac­cep­ted your de­fi­ance with joy.  A good knight can­not go to the grave with more sat­is­fac­tion than when fall­ing in his vo­ca­tion: whatever is the will of heaven, I sub­mit; for alas! Sirs, I am a man of many sor­rows.  Man­fred is no ob­ject of envy, but no doubt you are ac­quain­ted with my story.”

The knight made signs of ig­nor­ance, and seemed curi­ous to have Man­fred pro­ceed.

“Is it pos­sible, Sirs,” con­tin­ued the Prince, “that my story should be a secret to you?  Have you heard noth­ing re­lat­ing to me and the Prin­cess Hip­pol­ita?”

They shook their heads.

“No!  Thus, then, Sirs, it is.  You think me am­bi­tious: am­bi­tion, alas! is com­posed of more rugged ma­ter­i­als.  If I were am­bi­tious, I should not for so many years have been a prey to all the hell of con­scien­tious scruples.  But I weary your pa­tience: I will be brief.  Know, then, that I have long been troubled in mind on my union with the Prin­cess Hip­pol­ita.  Oh! Sirs, if ye were ac­quain­ted with that ex­cel­lent wo­man! if ye knew that I ad­ore her like a mis­tress, and cher­ish her as a friend—but man was not born for per­fect hap­pi­ness!  She shares my scruples, and with her con­sent I have brought this mat­ter be­fore the church, for we are re­lated within the for­bid­den de­grees.  I ex­pect every hour the defin­it­ive sen­tence that must sep­ar­ate us forever—I am sure you feel for me—I see you do—par­don these tears!”

The knights gazed on each other, won­der­ing where this would end.

Man­fred con­tin­ued—

“The death of my son be­tid­ing while my soul was un­der this anxi­ety, I thought of noth­ing but resign­ing my domin­ions, and re­tir­ing forever from the sight of man­kind.  My only dif­fi­culty was to fix on a suc­cessor, who would be tender of my people, and to dis­pose of the Lady Isa­bella, who is dear to me as my own blood.  I was will­ing to re­store the line of Alf­onso, even in his most dis­tant kindred.  And though, par­don me, I am sat­is­fied it was his will that Ri­cardo’s lin­eage should take place of his own re­la­tions; yet where was I to search for those re­la­tions?  I knew of none but Fre­deric, your Lord; he was a cap­tive to the in­fi­dels, or dead; and were he liv­ing, and at home, would he quit the flour­ish­ing State of Vi­cenza for the in­con­sid­er­able prin­cip­al­ity of Otranto?  If he would not, could I bear the thought of see­ing a hard, un­feel­ing, vice­roy set over my poor faith­ful people? for, Sirs, I love my people, and thank heaven am be­loved by them.  But ye will ask whither tends this long dis­course?  Briefly, then, thus, Sirs.  Heaven in your ar­rival seems to point out a rem­edy for these dif­fi­culties and my mis­for­tunes.  The Lady Isa­bella is at liberty; I shall soon be so.  I would sub­mit to any­thing for the good of my people.  Were it not the best, the only way to ex­tin­guish the feuds between our fam­il­ies, if I was to take the Lady Isa­bella to wife?  You start.  But though Hip­pol­ita’s vir­tues will ever be dear to me, a Prince must not con­sider him­self; he is born for his people.”  A ser­vant at that in­stant en­ter­ing the cham­ber ap­prised Man­fred that Jerome and sev­eral of his brethren de­man­ded im­me­di­ate ac­cess to him.

The Prince, pro­voked at this in­ter­rup­tion, and fear­ing that the friar would dis­cover to the strangers that Isa­bella had taken sanc­tu­ary, was go­ing to for­bid Jerome’s en­trance.  But re­col­lect­ing that he was cer­tainly ar­rived to no­tify the Prin­cess’s re­turn, Man­fred began to ex­cuse him­self to the knights for leav­ing them for a few mo­ments, but was pre­ven­ted by the ar­rival of the fri­ars.  Man­fred an­grily rep­rim­anded them for their in­tru­sion, and would have forced them back from the cham­ber; but Jerome was too much agit­ated to be re­pulsed.  He de­clared aloud the flight of Isa­bella, with prot­est­a­tions of his own in­no­cence.

Man­fred, dis­trac­ted at the news, and not less at its com­ing to the know­ledge of the strangers, uttered noth­ing but in­co­her­ent sen­tences, now up­braid­ing the friar, now apo­lo­gising to the knights, earn­est to know what was be­come of Isa­bella, yet equally afraid of their know­ing; im­pa­tient to pur­sue her, yet dread­ing to have them join in the pur­suit.  He offered to des­patch mes­sen­gers in quest of her, but the chief knight, no longer keep­ing si­lence, re­proached Man­fred in bit­ter terms for his dark and am­bigu­ous deal­ing, and de­man­ded the cause of Isa­bella’s first ab­sence from the castle.  Man­fred, cast­ing a stern look at Jerome, im­ply­ing a com­mand of si­lence, pre­ten­ded that on Con­rad’s death he had placed her in sanc­tu­ary un­til he could de­term­ine how to dis­pose of her.  Jerome, who trembled for his son’s life, did not dare con­tra­dict this false­hood, but one of his brethren, not un­der the same anxi­ety, de­clared frankly that she had fled to their church in the pre­ced­ing night.  The Prince in vain en­deav­oured to stop this dis­cov­ery, which over­whelmed him with shame and con­fu­sion.  The prin­cipal stranger, amazed at the con­tra­dic­tions he heard, and more than half per­suaded that Man­fred had secreted the Prin­cess, not­with­stand­ing the con­cern he ex­pressed at her flight, rush­ing to the door, said—

“Thou traitor Prince!  Isa­bella shall be found.”

Man­fred en­deav­oured to hold him, but the other knights as­sist­ing their com­rade, he broke from the Prince, and hastened into the court, de­mand­ing his at­tend­ants.  Man­fred, find­ing it vain to di­vert him from the pur­suit, offered to ac­com­pany him and sum­mon­ing his at­tend­ants, and tak­ing Jerome and some of the fri­ars to guide them, they is­sued from the castle; Man­fred privately giv­ing or­ders to have the knight’s com­pany se­cured, while to the knight he af­fected to des­patch a mes­sen­ger to re­quire their as­sist­ance.

The com­pany had no sooner quit­ted the castle than Mat­ilda, who felt her­self deeply in­ter­ested for the young peas­ant, since she had seen him con­demned to death in the hall, and whose thoughts had been taken up with con­cert­ing meas­ures to save him, was in­formed by some of the fe­male at­tend­ants that Man­fred had des­patched all his men vari­ous ways in pur­suit of Isa­bella.  He had in his hurry given this or­der in gen­eral terms, not mean­ing to ex­tend it to the guard he had set upon Theodore, but for­get­ting it.  The do­mest­ics, of­fi­cious to obey so per­emp­tory a Prince, and urged by their own curi­os­ity and love of nov­elty to join in any pre­cip­it­ate chase, had to a man left the castle.  Mat­ilda dis­en­gaged her­self from her wo­men, stole up to the black tower, and un­bolt­ing the door, presen­ted her­self to the as­ton­ished Theodore.

“Young man,” said she, “though fi­lial duty and wo­manly mod­esty con­demn the step I am tak­ing, yet holy char­ity, sur­mount­ing all other ties, jus­ti­fies this act.  Fly; the doors of thy prison are open: my father and his do­mest­ics are ab­sent; but they may soon re­turn.  Be gone in safety; and may the an­gels of heaven dir­ect thy course!”

“Thou art surely one of those an­gels!” said the en­rap­tured Theodore: “none but a blessed saint could speak, could act—could look—like thee.  May I not know the name of my di­vine pro­tectress?  Me­thought thou namedst thy father.  Is it pos­sible?  Can Man­fred’s blood feel holy pity!  Lovely Lady, thou an­swerest not.  But how art thou here thy­self?  Why dost thou neg­lect thy own safety, and waste a thought on a wretch like Theodore?  Let us fly to­gether: the life thou be­stow­est shall be ded­ic­ated to thy de­fence.”

“Alas! thou mis­takest,” said Mat­ilda, sign­ing: “I am Man­fred’s daugh­ter, but no dangers await me.”

“Amazement!” said Theodore; “but last night I blessed my­self for yield­ing thee the ser­vice thy gra­cious com­pas­sion so char­it­ably re­turns me now.”

“Still thou art in an er­ror,” said the Prin­cess; “but this is no time for ex­plan­a­tion.  Fly, vir­tu­ous youth, while it is in my power to save thee: should my father re­turn, thou and I both should in­deed have cause to tremble.”

“How!” said Theodore; “thinkest thou, charm­ing maid, that I will ac­cept of life at the haz­ard of aught calam­it­ous to thee?  Bet­ter I en­dured a thou­sand deaths.”

“I run no risk,” said Mat­ilda, “but by thy delay.  De­part; it can­not be known that I have as­sisted thy flight.”

“Swear by the saints above,” said Theodore, “that thou canst not be sus­pec­ted; else here I vow to await whatever can be­fall me.”

“Oh! thou art too gen­er­ous,” said Mat­ilda; “but rest as­sured that no sus­pi­cion can alight on me.”

“Give me thy beau­teous hand in token that thou dost not de­ceive me,” said Theodore; “and let me bathe it with the warm tears of grat­it­ude.”

“For­bear!” said the Prin­cess; “this must not be.”

“Alas!” said Theodore, “I have never known but calam­ity un­til this hour—per­haps shall never know other for­tune again: suf­fer the chaste rap­tures of holy grat­it­ude: ’tis my soul would print its ef­fu­sions on thy hand.”

“For­bear, and be gone,” said Mat­ilda.  “How would Isa­bella ap­prove of see­ing thee at my feet?”

“Who is Isa­bella?” said the young man with sur­prise.

“Ah, me!  I fear,” said the Prin­cess, “I am serving a de­ceit­ful one.  Hast thou for­got thy curi­os­ity this morn­ing?”

“Thy looks, thy ac­tions, all thy beau­teous self seem an em­an­a­tion of di­vin­ity,” said Theodore; “but thy words are dark and mys­ter­i­ous.  Speak, Lady; speak to thy ser­vant’s com­pre­hen­sion.”

“Thou un­der­stand­est but too well!” said Mat­ilda; “but once more I com­mand thee to be gone: thy blood, which I may pre­serve, will be on my head, if I waste the time in vain dis­course.”

“I go, Lady,” said Theodore, “be­cause it is thy will, and be­cause I would not bring the grey hairs of my father with sor­row to the grave.  Say but, ad­ored Lady, that I have thy gentle pity.”

“Stay,” said Mat­ilda; “I will con­duct thee to the sub­ter­raneous vault by which Isa­bella es­caped; it will lead thee to the church of St. Nich­olas, where thou mayst take sanc­tu­ary.”

“What!” said Theodore, “was it an­other, and not thy lovely self that I as­sisted to find the sub­ter­raneous pas­sage?”

“It was,” said Mat­ilda; “but ask no more; I tremble to see thee still abide here; fly to the sanc­tu­ary.”

“To sanc­tu­ary,” said Theodore; “no, Prin­cess; sanc­tu­ar­ies are for help­less dam­sels, or for crim­in­als.  Theodore’s soul is free from guilt, nor will wear the ap­pear­ance of it.  Give me a sword, Lady, and thy father shall learn that Theodore scorns an ig­no­mini­ous flight.”

“Rash youth!” said Mat­ilda; “thou wouldst not dare to lift thy pre­sump­tu­ous arm against the Prince of Otranto?”

“Not against thy father; in­deed, I dare not,” said Theodore.  “Ex­cuse me, Lady; I had for­got­ten.  But could I gaze on thee, and re­mem­ber thou art sprung from the tyr­ant Man­fred!  But he is thy father, and from this mo­ment my in­jur­ies are bur­ied in ob­li­vion.”

A deep and hol­low groan, which seemed to come from above, startled the Prin­cess and Theodore.

“Good heaven! we are over­heard!” said the Prin­cess.  They listened; but per­ceiv­ing no fur­ther noise, they both con­cluded it the ef­fect of pent-up va­pours.  And the Prin­cess, pre­ced­ing Theodore softly, car­ried him to her father’s ar­moury, where, equip­ping him with a com­plete suit, he was con­duc­ted by Mat­ilda to the postern-gate.

“Avoid the town,” said the Prin­cess, “and all the west­ern side of the castle.  ’Tis there the search must be mak­ing by Man­fred and the strangers; but hie thee to the op­pos­ite quarter.  Yon­der be­hind that forest to the east is a chain of rocks, hol­lowed into a labyrinth of cav­erns that reach to the sea coast.  There thou mayst lie con­cealed, till thou canst make signs to some ves­sel to put on shore, and take thee off.  Go! heaven be thy guide!—and some­times in thy pray­ers re­mem­ber—Mat­ilda!”

Theodore flung him­self at her feet, and seiz­ing her lily hand, which with struggles she suffered him to kiss, he vowed on the earli­est op­por­tun­ity to get him­self knighted, and fer­vently en­treated her per­mis­sion to swear him­self etern­ally her knight.  Ere the Prin­cess could reply, a clap of thun­der was sud­denly heard that shook the bat­tle­ments.  Theodore, re­gard­less of the tem­pest, would have urged his suit: but the Prin­cess, dis­mayed, re­treated hast­ily into the castle, and com­manded the youth to be gone with an air that would not be dis­obeyed.  He sighed, and re­tired, but with eyes fixed on the gate, un­til Mat­ilda, clos­ing it, put an end to an in­ter­view, in which the hearts of both had drunk so deeply of a pas­sion, which both now tasted for the first time.

Theodore went pens­ively to the con­vent, to ac­quaint his father with his de­liv­er­ance.  There he learned the ab­sence of Jerome, and the pur­suit that was mak­ing after the Lady Isa­bella, with some par­tic­u­lars of whose story he now first be­came ac­quain­ted.  The gen­er­ous gal­lantry of his nature promp­ted him to wish to as­sist her; but the monks could lend him no lights to guess at the route she had taken.  He was not temp­ted to wander far in search of her, for the idea of Mat­ilda had im­prin­ted it­self so strongly on his heart, that he could not bear to ab­sent him­self at much dis­tance from her abode.  The ten­der­ness Jerome had ex­pressed for him con­curred to con­firm this re­luct­ance; and he even per­suaded him­self that fi­lial af­fec­tion was the chief cause of his hov­er­ing between the castle and mon­as­tery.

Until Jerome should re­turn at night, Theodore at length de­term­ined to re­pair to the forest that Mat­ilda had poin­ted out to him.  Ar­riv­ing there, he sought the gloom­i­est shades, as best suited to the pleas­ing mel­an­choly that reigned in his mind.  In this mood he roved in­sens­ibly to the caves which had formerly served as a re­treat to her­mits, and were now re­por­ted round the coun­try to be haunted by evil spir­its.  He re­col­lec­ted to have heard this tra­di­tion; and be­ing of a brave and ad­ven­tur­ous dis­pos­i­tion, he will­ingly in­dulged his curi­os­ity in ex­plor­ing the secret re­cesses of this labyrinth.  He had not pen­et­rated far be­fore he thought he heard the steps of some per­son who seemed to re­treat be­fore him.

Theodore, though firmly groun­ded in all our holy faith en­joins to be be­lieved, had no ap­pre­hen­sion that good men were aban­doned without cause to the malice of the powers of dark­ness.  He thought the place more likely to be in­fes­ted by rob­bers than by those in­fernal agents who are re­por­ted to mo­lest and be­wilder trav­el­lers.  He had long burned with im­pa­tience to ap­prove his valour.  Draw­ing his sabre, he marched sed­ately on­wards, still dir­ect­ing his steps as the im­per­fect rust­ling sound be­fore him led the way.  The ar­mour he wore was a like in­dic­a­tion to the per­son who avoided him.  Theodore, now con­vinced that he was not mis­taken, re­doubled his pace, and evid­ently gained on the per­son that fled, whose haste in­creas­ing, Theodore came up just as a wo­man fell breath­less be­fore him.  He hasted to raise her, but her ter­ror was so great that he ap­pre­hen­ded she would faint in his arms.  He used every gentle word to dis­pel her alarms, and as­sured her that far from in­jur­ing, he would de­fend her at the peril of his life.  The Lady, re­cov­er­ing her spir­its from his cour­teous de­mean­our, and gaz­ing on her pro­tector, said—

“Sure, I have heard that voice be­fore!”

“Not to my know­ledge,” replied Theodore; “un­less, as I con­jec­ture, thou art the Lady Isa­bella.”

“Mer­ci­ful heaven!” cried she.  “Thou art not sent in quest of me, art thou?”  And say­ing those words, she threw her­self at his feet, and be­sought him not to de­liver her up to Man­fred.

“To Man­fred!” cried Theodore—“no, Lady; I have once already de­livered thee from his tyranny, and it shall fare hard with me now, but I will place thee out of the reach of his dar­ing.”

“Is it pos­sible,” said she, “that thou shouldst be the gen­er­ous un­known whom I met last night in the vault of the castle?  Sure thou art not a mor­tal, but my guard­ian an­gel.  On my knees, let me thank—”

“Hold! gentle Prin­cess,” said Theodore, “nor de­mean thy­self be­fore a poor and friend­less young man.  If heaven has se­lec­ted me for thy de­liverer, it will ac­com­plish its work, and strengthen my arm in thy cause.  But come, Lady, we are too near the mouth of the cav­ern; let us seek its in­most re­cesses.  I can have no tran­quil­lity till I have placed thee bey­ond the reach of danger.”

“Alas! what mean you, sir?” said she.  “Though all your ac­tions are noble, though your sen­ti­ments speak the pur­ity of your soul, is it fit­ting that I should ac­com­pany you alone into these per­plexed re­treats?  Should we be found to­gether, what would a cen­sori­ous world think of my con­duct?”

“I re­spect your vir­tu­ous del­ic­acy,” said Theodore; “nor do you har­bour a sus­pi­cion that wounds my hon­our.  I meant to con­duct you into the most private cav­ity of these rocks, and then at the haz­ard of my life to guard their en­trance against every liv­ing thing.  Besides, Lady,” con­tin­ued he, draw­ing a deep sigh, “beau­teous and all per­fect as your form is, and though my wishes are not guilt­less of as­pir­ing, know, my soul is ded­ic­ated to an­other; and al­though—”  A sud­den noise pre­ven­ted Theodore from pro­ceed­ing.  They soon dis­tin­guished these sounds—

“Isa­bella! what, ho! Isa­bella!”  The trem­bling Prin­cess re­lapsed into her former agony of fear.  Theodore en­deav­oured to en­cour­age her, but in vain.  He as­sured her he would die rather than suf­fer her to re­turn un­der Man­fred’s power; and beg­ging her to re­main con­cealed, he went forth to pre­vent the per­son in search of her from ap­proach­ing.

At the mouth of the cav­ern he found an armed knight, dis­cours­ing with a peas­ant, who as­sured him he had seen a lady enter the passes of the rock.  The knight was pre­par­ing to seek her, when Theodore, pla­cing him­self in his way, with his sword drawn, sternly for­bad him at his peril to ad­vance.

“And who art thou, who darest to cross my way?” said the knight, haught­ily.

“One who does not dare more than he will per­form,” said Theodore.

“I seek the Lady Isa­bella,” said the knight, “and un­der­stand she has taken refuge among these rocks.  Im­pede me not, or thou wilt re­pent hav­ing pro­voked my re­sent­ment.”

“Thy pur­pose is as odi­ous as thy re­sent­ment is con­tempt­ible,” said Theodore.  “Return whence thou camest, or we shall soon know whose re­sent­ment is most ter­rible.”

The stranger, who was the prin­cipal knight that had ar­rived from the Mar­quis of Vi­cenza, had gal­loped from Man­fred as he was busied in get­ting in­form­a­tion of the Prin­cess, and giv­ing vari­ous or­ders to pre­vent her fall­ing into the power of the three knights.  Their chief had sus­pec­ted Man­fred of be­ing privy to the Prin­cess’s ab­scond­ing, and this in­sult from a man, who he con­cluded was sta­tioned by that Prince to secrete her, con­firm­ing his sus­pi­cions, he made no reply, but dis­char­ging a blow with his sabre at Theodore, would soon have re­moved all ob­struc­tion, if Theodore, who took him for one of Man­fred’s cap­tains, and who had no sooner given the pro­voca­tion than pre­pared to sup­port it, had not re­ceived the stroke on his shield.  The valour that had so long been smothered in his breast broke forth at once; he rushed im­petu­ously on the knight, whose pride and wrath were not less power­ful in­cent­ives to hardy deeds.  The com­bat was furi­ous, but not long.  Theodore wounded the knight in three sev­eral places, and at last dis­armed him as he fain­ted by the loss of blood.

The peas­ant, who had fled on the first on­set, had given the alarm to some of Man­fred’s do­mest­ics, who, by his or­ders, were dis­persed through the forest in pur­suit of Isa­bella.  They came up as the knight fell, whom they soon dis­covered to be the noble stranger.  Theodore, not­with­stand­ing his hatred to Man­fred, could not be­hold the vic­tory he had gained without emo­tions of pity and gen­er­os­ity.  But he was more touched when he learned the qual­ity of his ad­versary, and was in­formed that he was no re­tainer, but an en­emy, of Man­fred.  He as­sisted the ser­vants of the lat­ter in dis­arm­ing the knight, and in en­deav­our­ing to stanch the blood that flowed from his wounds.  The knight, re­cov­er­ing his speech, said, in a faint and fal­ter­ing voice—

“Gen­er­ous foe, we have both been in an er­ror.  I took thee for an in­stru­ment of the tyr­ant; I per­ceive thou hast made the like mis­take.  It is too late for ex­cuses.  I faint.  If Isa­bella is at hand—call her—I have im­port­ant secrets to—”

“He is dy­ing!” said one of the at­tend­ants; “has nobody a cru­ci­fix about them?  Andrea, do thou pray over him.”

“Fetch some wa­ter,” said Theodore, “and pour it down his throat, while I hasten to the Prin­cess.”

Say­ing this, he flew to Isa­bella, and in few words told her mod­estly that he had been so un­for­tu­nate by mis­take as to wound a gen­tle­man from her father’s court, who wished, ere he died, to im­part some­thing of con­sequence to her.

The Prin­cess, who had been trans­por­ted at hear­ing the voice of Theodore, as he called to her to come forth, was as­ton­ished at what she heard.  Suffer­ing her­self to be con­duc­ted by Theodore, the new proof of whose valour re­called her dis­persed spir­its, she came where the bleed­ing knight lay speech­less on the ground.  But her fears re­turned when she be­held the do­mest­ics of Man­fred.  She would again have fled if Theodore had not made her ob­serve that they were un­armed, and had not threatened them with in­stant death if they should dare to seize the Prin­cess.

The stranger, open­ing his eyes, and be­hold­ing a wo­man, said, “Art thou—pray tell me truly—art thou Isa­bella of Vi­cenza?”

“I am,” said she: “good heaven re­store thee!”

“Then thou—then thou”—said the knight, strug­gling for ut­ter­ance—“seest—thy father.  Give me one—”

“Oh! amazement! hor­ror! what do I hear! what do I see!” cried Isa­bella.  “My father!  You my father!  How came you here, Sir?  For heaven’s sake, speak!  Oh! run for help, or he will ex­pire!”

“ ’Tis most true,” said the wounded knight, ex­ert­ing all his force; “I am Fre­deric thy father.  Yes, I came to de­liver thee.  It will not be.  Give me a part­ing kiss, and take—”

“Sir,” said Theodore, “do not ex­haust your­self; suf­fer us to con­vey you to the castle.”

“To the castle!” said Isa­bella.  “Is there no help nearer than the castle?  Would you ex­pose my father to the tyr­ant?  If he goes thither, I dare not ac­com­pany him; and yet, can I leave him!”

“My child,” said Fre­deric, “it mat­ters not for me whither I am car­ried.  A few minutes will place me bey­ond danger; but while I have eyes to dote on thee, for­sake me not, dear Isa­bella!  This brave knight—I know not who he is—will pro­tect thy in­no­cence.  Sir, you will not aban­don my child, will you?”

Theodore, shed­ding tears over his vic­tim, and vow­ing to guard the Prin­cess at the ex­pense of his life, per­suaded Fre­deric to suf­fer him­self to be con­duc­ted to the castle.  They placed him on a horse be­long­ing to one of the do­mest­ics, after bind­ing up his wounds as well as they were able.  Theodore marched by his side; and the af­flic­ted Isa­bella, who could not bear to quit him, fol­lowed mourn­fully be­hind.

IV

The sor­row­ful troop no sooner ar­rived at the castle, than they were met by Hip­pol­ita and Mat­ilda, whom Isa­bella had sent one of the do­mest­ics be­fore to ad­vert­ise of their ap­proach.  The ladies caus­ing Fre­deric to be con­veyed into the nearest cham­ber, re­tired, while the sur­geons ex­amined his wounds.  Mat­ilda blushed at see­ing Theodore and Isa­bella to­gether; but en­deav­oured to con­ceal it by em­bra­cing the lat­ter, and con­dol­ing with her on her father’s mis­chance.  The sur­geons soon came to ac­quaint Hip­pol­ita that none of the Mar­quis’s wounds were dan­ger­ous; and that he was de­sirous of see­ing his daugh­ter and the Prin­cesses.

Theodore, un­der pre­tence of ex­press­ing his joy at be­ing freed from his ap­pre­hen­sions of the com­bat be­ing fatal to Fre­deric, could not res­ist the im­pulse of fol­low­ing Mat­ilda.  Her eyes were so of­ten cast down on meet­ing his, that Isa­bella, who re­garded Theodore as at­tent­ively as he gazed on Mat­ilda, soon di­vined who the ob­ject was that he had told her in the cave en­gaged his af­fec­tions.  While this mute scene passed, Hip­pol­ita de­man­ded of Fre­deric the cause of his hav­ing taken that mys­ter­i­ous course for re­claim­ing his daugh­ter; and threw in vari­ous apo­lo­gies to ex­cuse her Lord for the match con­trac­ted between their chil­dren.

Fre­deric, how­ever in­censed against Man­fred, was not in­sens­ible to the cour­tesy and be­ne­vol­ence of Hip­pol­ita: but he was still more struck with the lovely form of Mat­ilda.  Wish­ing to de­tain them by his bed­side, he in­formed Hip­pol­ita of his story.  He told her that, while pris­oner to the in­fi­dels, he had dreamed that his daugh­ter, of whom he had learned no news since his cap­tiv­ity, was de­tained in a castle, where she was in danger of the most dread­ful mis­for­tunes: and that if he ob­tained his liberty, and re­paired to a wood near Joppa, he would learn more.  Alarmed at this dream, and in­cap­able of obey­ing the dir­ec­tion given by it, his chains be­came more griev­ous than ever.  But while his thoughts were oc­cu­pied on the means of ob­tain­ing his liberty, he re­ceived the agree­able news that the con­fed­er­ate Princes who were war­ring in Palestine had paid his ransom.  He in­stantly set out for the wood that had been marked in his dream.

For three days he and his at­tend­ants had wandered in the forest without see­ing a hu­man form: but on the even­ing of the third they came to a cell, in which they found a ven­er­able her­mit in the ag­on­ies of death.  Ap­ply­ing rich cor­di­als, they brought the faint­ing man to his speech.

“My sons,” said he, “I am bounden to your char­ity—but it is in vain—I am go­ing to my eternal rest—yet I die with the sat­is­fac­tion of per­form­ing the will of heaven.  When first I re­paired to this solitude, after see­ing my coun­try be­come a prey to un­be­liev­ers—it is alas! above fifty years since I was wit­ness to that dread­ful scene!  St. Nich­olas ap­peared to me, and re­vealed a secret, which he bade me never dis­close to mor­tal man, but on my deathbed.  This is that tre­mend­ous hour, and ye are no doubt the chosen war­ri­ors to whom I was ordered to re­veal my trust.  As soon as ye have done the last of­fices to this wretched corse, dig un­der the sev­enth tree on the left hand of this poor cave, and your pains will—Oh! good heaven re­ceive my soul!”  With those words the de­vout man breathed his last.

“By break of day,” con­tin­ued Fre­deric, “when we had com­mit­ted the holy rel­ics to earth, we dug ac­cord­ing to dir­ec­tion.  But what was our as­ton­ish­ment when about the depth of six feet we dis­covered an enorm­ous sabre—the very weapon yon­der in the court.  On the blade, which was then partly out of the scab­bard, though since closed by our ef­forts in re­mov­ing it, were writ­ten the fol­low­ing lines—no; ex­cuse me, Madam,” ad­ded the Mar­quis, turn­ing to Hip­pol­ita; “if I for­bear to re­peat them: I re­spect your sex and rank, and would not be guilty of of­fend­ing your ear with sounds in­jur­i­ous to aught that is dear to you.”

He paused.  Hip­pol­ita trembled.  She did not doubt but Fre­deric was destined by heaven to ac­com­plish the fate that seemed to threaten her house.  Look­ing with anxious fond­ness at Mat­ilda, a si­lent tear stole down her cheek: but re­col­lect­ing her­self, she said—

“Pro­ceed, my Lord; heaven does noth­ing in vain; mor­tals must re­ceive its di­vine be­hests with lowli­ness and sub­mis­sion.  It is our part to de­prec­ate its wrath, or bow to its de­crees.  Repeat the sen­tence, my Lord; we listen resigned.”

Fre­deric was grieved that he had pro­ceeded so far.  The dig­nity and pa­tient firm­ness of Hip­pol­ita pen­et­rated him with re­spect, and the tender si­lent af­fec­tion with which the Prin­cess and her daugh­ter re­garded each other, melted him al­most to tears.  Yet ap­pre­hens­ive that his for­bear­ance to obey would be more alarm­ing, he re­peated in a fal­ter­ing and low voice the fol­low­ing lines:

“Where’er a casque that suits this sword is found,
With per­ils is thy daugh­ter com­pass’d round;
Alf­onso’s blood alone can save the maid,
And quiet a long rest­less Prince’s shade.”

“What is there in these lines,” said Theodore im­pa­tiently, “that af­fects these Prin­cesses?  Why were they to be shocked by a mys­ter­i­ous del­ic­acy, that has so little found­a­tion?”

“Your words are rude, young man,” said the Mar­quis; “and though for­tune has fa­voured you once—”

“My hon­oured Lord,” said Isa­bella, who re­sen­ted Theodore’s warmth, which she per­ceived was dic­tated by his sen­ti­ments for Mat­ilda, “dis­com­pose not your­self for the glos­ing of a peas­ant’s son: he for­gets the rev­er­ence he owes you; but he is not ac­cus­tomed—”

Hip­pol­ita, con­cerned at the heat that had arisen, checked Theodore for his bold­ness, but with an air ac­know­ledging his zeal; and chan­ging the con­ver­sa­tion, de­man­ded of Fre­deric where he had left her Lord?  As the Mar­quis was go­ing to reply, they heard a noise without, and rising to in­quire the cause, Man­fred, Jerome, and part of the troop, who had met an im­per­fect ru­mour of what had happened, entered the cham­ber.  Man­fred ad­vanced hast­ily to­wards Fre­deric’s bed to con­dole with him on his mis­for­tune, and to learn the cir­cum­stances of the com­bat, when start­ing in an agony of ter­ror and amazement, he cried—

“Ha! what art thou? thou dread­ful spectre! is my hour come?”

“My dearest, gra­cious Lord,” cried Hip­pol­ita, clasp­ing him in her arms, “what is it you see!  Why do you fix your eye­balls thus?”

“What!” cried Man­fred breath­less; “dost thou see noth­ing, Hip­pol­ita?  Is this ghastly phantom sent to me alone—to rue, who did not—”

“For mercy’s sweetest self, my Lord,” said Hip­pol­ita, “re­sume your soul, com­mand your reason.  There is none here, but us, your friends.”

“What, is not that Alf­onso?” cried Man­fred.  “Dost thou not see him? can it be my brain’s de­li­rium?”

“This! my Lord,” said Hip­pol­ita; “this is Theodore, the youth who has been so un­for­tu­nate.”

“Theodore!” said Man­fred mourn­fully, and strik­ing his fore­head; “Theodore or a phantom, he has un­hinged the soul of Man­fred.  But how comes he here? and how comes he in ar­mour?”

“I be­lieve he went in search of Isa­bella,” said Hip­pol­ita.

“Of Isa­bella!” said Man­fred, re­lapsing into rage; “yes, yes, that is not doubt­ful—.  But how did he es­cape from dur­ance in which I left him?  Was it Isa­bella, or this hy­po­crit­ical old friar, that pro­cured his en­large­ment?”

“And would a par­ent be crim­inal, my Lord,” said Theodore, “if he med­it­ated the de­liv­er­ance of his child?”

Jerome, amazed to hear him­self in a man­ner ac­cused by his son, and without found­a­tion, knew not what to think.  He could not com­pre­hend how Theodore had es­caped, how he came to be armed, and to en­counter Fre­deric.  Still he would not ven­ture to ask any ques­tions that might tend to in­flame Man­fred’s wrath against his son.  Jerome’s si­lence con­vinced Man­fred that he had con­trived Theodore’s re­lease.

“And is it thus, thou un­grate­ful old man,” said the Prince, ad­dress­ing him­self to the friar, “that thou re­pay­est mine and Hip­pol­ita’s boun­ties?  And not con­tent with tra­vers­ing my heart’s nearest wishes, thou armest thy bas­tard, and bring­est him into my own castle to in­sult me!”

“My Lord,” said Theodore, “you wrong my father: neither he nor I are cap­able of har­bour­ing a thought against your peace.  Is it in­solence thus to sur­render my­self to your High­ness’s pleas­ure?” ad­ded he, lay­ing his sword re­spect­fully at Man­fred’s feet.  “Be­hold my bosom; strike, my Lord, if you sus­pect that a dis­loyal thought is lodged there.  There is not a sen­ti­ment en­graven on my heart that does not ven­er­ate you and yours.”

The grace and fer­vour with which Theodore uttered these words in­ter­ested every per­son present in his fa­vour.  Even Man­fred was touched—yet still pos­sessed with his re­semb­lance to Alf­onso, his ad­mir­a­tion was dashed with secret hor­ror.

“Rise,” said he; “thy life is not my present pur­pose.  But tell me thy his­tory, and how thou camest con­nec­ted with this old traitor here.”

“My Lord,” said Jerome eagerly.

“Peace! im­postor!” said Man­fred; “I will not have him promp­ted.”

“My Lord,” said Theodore, “I want no as­sist­ance; my story is very brief.  I was car­ried at five years of age to Al­gi­ers with my mother, who had been taken by cor­sairs from the coast of Si­cily.  She died of grief in less than a twelve­month;” the tears gushed from Jerome’s eyes, on whose coun­ten­ance a thou­sand anxious pas­sions stood ex­pressed.  “Be­fore she died,” con­tin­ued Theodore, “she bound a writ­ing about my arm un­der my gar­ments, which told me I was the son of the Count Fal­con­ara.”

“It is most true,” said Jerome; “I am that wretched father.”

“Again I en­join thee si­lence,” said Man­fred: “pro­ceed.”

“I re­mained in slavery,” said Theodore, “un­til within these two years, when at­tend­ing on my mas­ter in his cruises, I was de­livered by a Chris­tian ves­sel, which over­powered the pir­ate; and dis­cov­er­ing my­self to the cap­tain, he gen­er­ously put me on shore in Si­cily; but alas! in­stead of find­ing a father, I learned that his es­tate, which was situ­ated on the coast, had, dur­ing his ab­sence, been laid waste by the Rover who had car­ried my mother and me into cap­tiv­ity: that his castle had been burnt to the ground, and that my father on his re­turn had sold what re­mained, and was re­tired into re­li­gion in the king­dom of Naples, but where no man could in­form me.  Desti­tute and friend­less, hope­less al­most of at­tain­ing the trans­port of a par­ent’s em­brace, I took the first op­por­tun­ity of set­ting sail for Naples, from whence, within these six days, I wandered into this province, still sup­port­ing my­self by the la­bour of my hands; nor un­til yes­ter-morn did I be­lieve that heaven had re­served any lot for me but peace of mind and con­ten­ted poverty.  This, my Lord, is Theodore’s story.  I am blessed bey­ond my hope in find­ing a father; I am un­for­tu­nate bey­ond my desert in hav­ing in­curred your High­ness’s dis­pleas­ure.”

He ceased.  A mur­mur of ap­prob­a­tion gently arose from the audi­ence.

“This is not all,” said Fre­deric; “I am bound in hon­our to add what he sup­presses.  Though he is mod­est, I must be gen­er­ous; he is one of the bravest youths on Chris­tian ground.  He is warm too; and from the short know­ledge I have of him, I will pledge my­self for his vera­city: if what he re­ports of him­self were not true, he would not ut­ter it—and for me, youth, I hon­our a frank­ness which be­comes thy birth; but now, and thou didst of­fend me: yet the noble blood which flows in thy veins, may well be al­lowed to boil out, when it has so re­cently traced it­self to its source.  Come, my Lord,” (turn­ing to Man­fred), “if I can par­don him, surely you may; it is not the youth’s fault, if you took him for a spectre.”

This bit­ter taunt galled the soul of Man­fred.

“If be­ings from an­other world,” replied he haught­ily, “have power to im­press my mind with awe, it is more than liv­ing man can do; nor could a strip­ling’s arm.”

“My Lord,” in­ter­rup­ted Hip­pol­ita, “your guest has oc­ca­sion for re­pose: shall we not leave him to his rest?”  Say­ing this, and tak­ing Man­fred by the hand, she took leave of Fre­deric, and led the com­pany forth.

The Prince, not sorry to quit a con­ver­sa­tion which re­called to mind the dis­cov­ery he had made of his most secret sen­sa­tions, suffered him­self to be con­duc­ted to his own apart­ment, after per­mit­ting Theodore, though un­der en­gage­ment to re­turn to the castle on the mor­row (a con­di­tion the young man gladly ac­cep­ted), to re­tire with his father to the con­vent.  Mat­ilda and Isa­bella were too much oc­cu­pied with their own re­flec­tions, and too little con­tent with each other, to wish for farther con­verse that night.  They sep­ar­ated each to her cham­ber, with more ex­pres­sions of ce­re­mony and fewer of af­fec­tion than had passed between them since their child­hood.

If they par­ted with small cor­di­al­ity, they did but meet with greater im­pa­tience, as soon as the sun was risen.  Their minds were in a situ­ation that ex­cluded sleep, and each re­col­lec­ted a thou­sand ques­tions which she wished she had put to the other overnight.  Mat­ilda re­flec­ted that Isa­bella had been twice de­livered by Theodore in very crit­ical situ­ations, which she could not be­lieve ac­ci­dental.  His eyes, it was true, had been fixed on her in Fre­deric’s cham­ber; but that might have been to dis­guise his pas­sion for Isa­bella from the fath­ers of both.  It were bet­ter to clear this up.  She wished to know the truth, lest she should wrong her friend by en­ter­tain­ing a pas­sion for Isa­bella’s lover.  Thus jeal­ousy promp­ted, and at the same time bor­rowed an ex­cuse from friend­ship to jus­tify its curi­os­ity.

Isa­bella, not less rest­less, had bet­ter found­a­tion for her sus­pi­cions.  Both Theodore’s tongue and eyes had told her his heart was en­gaged; it was true—yet, per­haps, Mat­ilda might not cor­res­pond to his pas­sion; she had ever ap­peared in­sens­ible to love: all her thoughts were set on heaven.

“Why did I dis­suade her?” said Isa­bella to her­self; “I am pun­ished for my gen­er­os­ity; but when did they meet? where?  It can­not be; I have de­ceived my­self; per­haps last night was the first time they ever be­held each other; it must be some other ob­ject that has pre­pos­sessed his af­fec­tions—if it is, I am not so un­happy as I thought; if it is not my friend Mat­ilda—how!  Can I stoop to wish for the af­fec­tion of a man, who rudely and un­ne­ces­sar­ily ac­quain­ted me with his in­dif­fer­ence? and that at the very mo­ment in which com­mon cour­tesy de­man­ded at least ex­pres­sions of ci­vil­ity.  I will go to my dear Mat­ilda, who will con­firm me in this be­com­ing pride.  Man is false—I will ad­vise with her on tak­ing the veil: she will re­joice to find me in this dis­pos­i­tion; and I will ac­quaint her that I no longer op­pose her in­clin­a­tion for the cloister.”

In this frame of mind, and de­term­ined to open her heart en­tirely to Mat­ilda, she went to that Prin­cess’s cham­ber, whom she found already dressed, and lean­ing pens­ively on her arm.  This at­ti­tude, so cor­res­pond­ent to what she felt her­self, re­vived Isa­bella’s sus­pi­cions, and des­troyed the con­fid­ence she had pur­posed to place in her friend.  They blushed at meet­ing, and were too much novices to dis­guise their sen­sa­tions with ad­dress.  After some un­mean­ing ques­tions and replies, Mat­ilda de­man­ded of Isa­bella the cause of her flight?  The lat­ter, who had al­most for­got­ten Man­fred’s pas­sion, so en­tirely was she oc­cu­pied by her own, con­clud­ing that Mat­ilda re­ferred to her last es­cape from the con­vent, which had oc­ca­sioned the events of the pre­ced­ing even­ing, replied—

“Mar­telli brought word to the con­vent that your mother was dead.”

“Oh!” said Mat­ilda, in­ter­rupt­ing her, “Bi­anca has ex­plained that mis­take to me: on see­ing me faint, she cried out, ‘The Prin­cess is dead!’ and Mar­telli, who had come for the usual dole to the castle—”

“And what made you faint?” said Isa­bella, in­dif­fer­ent to the rest.  Mat­ilda blushed and stammered—

“My father—he was sit­ting in judg­ment on a crim­inal—”

“What crim­inal?” said Isa­bella eagerly.

“A young man,” said Mat­ilda; “I be­lieve—”

“I think it was that young man that—”

“What, Theodore?” said Isa­bella.

“Yes,” answered she; “I never saw him be­fore; I do not know how he had of­fen­ded my father, but as he has been of ser­vice to you, I am glad my Lord has pardoned him.”

“Served me!” replied Isa­bella; “do you term it serving me, to wound my father, and al­most oc­ca­sion his death?  Though it is but since yes­ter­day that I am blessed with know­ing a par­ent, I hope Mat­ilda does not think I am such a stranger to fi­lial ten­der­ness as not to re­sent the bold­ness of that au­da­cious youth, and that it is im­possible for me ever to feel any af­fec­tion for one who dared to lift his arm against the au­thor of my be­ing.  No, Mat­ilda, my heart ab­hors him; and if you still re­tain the friend­ship for me that you have vowed from your in­fancy, you will de­test a man who has been on the point of mak­ing me miser­able forever.”

Mat­ilda held down her head and replied: “I hope my dearest Isa­bella does not doubt her Mat­ilda’s friend­ship: I never be­held that youth un­til yes­ter­day; he is al­most a stranger to me: but as the sur­geons have pro­nounced your father out of danger, you ought not to har­bour un­char­it­able re­sent­ment against one, who I am per­suaded did not know the Mar­quis was re­lated to you.”

“You plead his cause very pathet­ic­ally,” said Isa­bella, “con­sid­er­ing he is so much a stranger to you!  I am mis­taken, or he re­turns your char­ity.”

“What mean you?” said Mat­ilda.

“Noth­ing,” said Isa­bella, re­pent­ing that she had given Mat­ilda a hint of Theodore’s in­clin­a­tion for her.  Then chan­ging the dis­course, she asked Mat­ilda what oc­ca­sioned Man­fred to take Theodore for a spectre?

“Bless me,” said Mat­ilda, “did not you ob­serve his ex­treme re­semb­lance to the por­trait of Alf­onso in the gal­lery?  I took no­tice of it to Bi­anca even be­fore I saw him in ar­mour; but with the hel­met on, he is the very im­age of that pic­ture.”

“I do not much ob­serve pic­tures,” said Isa­bella: “much less have I ex­amined this young man so at­tent­ively as you seem to have done.  Ah?  Mat­ilda, your heart is in danger, but let me warn you as a friend, he has owned to me that he is in love; it can­not be with you, for yes­ter­day was the first time you ever met—was it not?”

“Cer­tainly,” replied Mat­ilda; “but why does my dearest Isa­bella con­clude from any­thing I have said, that”—she paused—then con­tinu­ing: “he saw you first, and I am far from hav­ing the van­ity to think that my little por­tion of charms could en­gage a heart de­voted to you; may you be happy, Isa­bella, whatever is the fate of Mat­ilda!”

“My lovely friend,” said Isa­bella, whose heart was too hon­est to res­ist a kind ex­pres­sion, “it is you that Theodore ad­mires; I saw it; I am per­suaded of it; nor shall a thought of my own hap­pi­ness suf­fer me to in­ter­fere with yours.”

This frank­ness drew tears from the gentle Mat­ilda; and jeal­ousy that for a mo­ment had raised a cool­ness between these ami­able maid­ens soon gave way to the nat­ural sin­cer­ity and cand­our of their souls.  Each con­fessed to the other the im­pres­sion that Theodore had made on her; and this con­fid­ence was fol­lowed by a struggle of gen­er­os­ity, each in­sist­ing on yield­ing her claim to her friend.  At length the dig­nity of Isa­bella’s vir­tue re­mind­ing her of the pref­er­ence which Theodore had al­most de­clared for her rival, made her de­term­ine to con­quer her pas­sion, and cede the be­loved ob­ject to her friend.

Dur­ing this con­test of amity, Hip­pol­ita entered her daugh­ter’s cham­ber.

“Madam,” said she to Isa­bella, “you have so much ten­der­ness for Mat­ilda, and in­terest your­self so kindly in whatever af­fects our wretched house, that I can have no secrets with my child which are not proper for you to hear.”

The prin­cesses were all at­ten­tion and anxi­ety.

“Know then, Madam,” con­tin­ued Hip­pol­ita, “and you my dearest Mat­ilda, that be­ing con­vinced by all the events of these two last omin­ous days, that heaven pur­poses the sceptre of Otranto should pass from Man­fred’s hands into those of the Mar­quis Fre­deric, I have been per­haps in­spired with the thought of avert­ing our total de­struc­tion by the union of our rival houses.  With this view I have been pro­pos­ing to Man­fred, my lord, to tender this dear, dear child to Fre­deric, your father.”

“Me to Lord Fre­deric!” cried Mat­ilda; “good heav­ens! my gra­cious mother—and have you named it to my father?”

“I have,” said Hip­pol­ita; “he listened be­nignly to my pro­posal, and is gone to break it to the Mar­quis.”

“Ah! wretched prin­cess!” cried Isa­bella; “what hast thou done! what ruin has thy in­ad­vert­ent good­ness been pre­par­ing for thy­self, for me, and for Mat­ilda!”

“Ruin from me to you and to my child!” said Hip­pol­ita “what can this mean?”

“Alas!” said Isa­bella, “the pur­ity of your own heart pre­vents your see­ing the de­prav­ity of oth­ers.  Man­fred, your lord, that im­pi­ous man—”

“Hold,” said Hip­pol­ita; “you must not in my pres­ence, young lady, men­tion Man­fred with dis­respect: he is my lord and hus­band, and—”

“Will not long be so,” said Isa­bella, “if his wicked pur­poses can be car­ried into ex­e­cu­tion.”

“This lan­guage amazes me,” said Hip­pol­ita.  “Your feel­ing, Isa­bella, is warm; but un­til this hour I never knew it be­tray you into in­tem­per­ance.  What deed of Man­fred au­thor­ises you to treat him as a mur­derer, an as­sas­sin?”

“Thou vir­tu­ous, and too cred­u­lous Prin­cess!” replied Isa­bella; “it is not thy life he aims at—it is to sep­ar­ate him­self from thee! to di­vorce thee! to—”

“To di­vorce me!”  “To di­vorce my mother!” cried Hip­pol­ita and Mat­ilda at once.

“Yes,” said Isa­bella; “and to com­plete his crime, he med­it­ates—I can­not speak it!”

“What can sur­pass what thou hast already uttered?” said Mat­ilda.

Hip­pol­ita was si­lent.  Grief choked her speech; and the re­col­lec­tion of Man­fred’s late am­bigu­ous dis­courses con­firmed what she heard.

“Ex­cel­lent, dear lady! madam! mother!” cried Isa­bella, fling­ing her­self at Hip­pol­ita’s feet in a trans­port of pas­sion; “trust me, be­lieve me, I will die a thou­sand deaths sooner than con­sent to in­jure you, than yield to so odi­ous—oh!—”

“This is too much!” cried Hip­pol­ita: “What crimes does one crime sug­gest!  Rise, dear Isa­bella; I do not doubt your vir­tue.  Oh! Mat­ilda, this stroke is too heavy for thee! weep not, my child; and not a mur­mur, I charge thee.  Re­mem­ber, he is thy father still!”

“But you are my mother too,” said Mat­ilda fer­vently; “and you are vir­tu­ous, you are guilt­less!—Oh! must not I, must not I com­plain?”

“You must not,” said Hip­pol­ita—“come, all will yet be well.  Man­fred, in the agony for the loss of thy brother, knew not what he said; per­haps Isa­bella mis­un­der­stood him; his heart is good—and, my child, thou know­est not all!  There is a des­tiny hangs over us; the hand of Provid­ence is stretched out; oh! could I but save thee from the wreck!  Yes,” con­tin­ued she in a firmer tone, “per­haps the sac­ri­fice of my­self may atone for all; I will go and of­fer my­self to this di­vorce—it boots not what be­comes of me.  I will with­draw into the neigh­bour­ing mon­as­tery, and waste the re­mainder of life in pray­ers and tears for my child and—the Prince!”

“Thou art as much too good for this world,” said Isa­bella, “as Man­fred is ex­ec­rable; but think not, lady, that thy weak­ness shall de­term­ine for me.  I swear, hear me all ye an­gels—”

“Stop, I ad­jure thee,” cried Hip­pol­ita: “re­mem­ber thou dost not de­pend on thy­self; thou hast a father.”

“My father is too pi­ous, too noble,” in­ter­rup­ted Isa­bella, “to com­mand an im­pi­ous deed.  But should he com­mand it; can a father en­join a cursed act?  I was con­trac­ted to the son, can I wed the father?  No, madam, no; force should not drag me to Man­fred’s hated bed.  I loathe him, I ab­hor him: di­vine and hu­man laws for­bid—and my friend, my dearest Mat­ilda! would I wound her tender soul by in­jur­ing her ad­ored mother? my own mother—I never have known an­other”—

“Oh! she is the mother of both!” cried Mat­ilda: “can we, can we, Isa­bella, ad­ore her too much?”

“My lovely chil­dren,” said the touched Hip­pol­ita, “your ten­der­ness over­powers me—but I must not give way to it.  It is not ours to make elec­tion for ourselves: heaven, our fath­ers, and our hus­bands must de­cide for us.  Have pa­tience un­til you hear what Man­fred and Fre­deric have de­term­ined.  If the Mar­quis ac­cepts Mat­ilda’s hand, I know she will read­ily obey.  Heaven may in­ter­pose and pre­vent the rest.  What means my child?” con­tin­ued she, see­ing Mat­ilda fall at her feet with a flood of speech­less tears—“But no; an­swer me not, my daugh­ter: I must not hear a word against the pleas­ure of thy father.”

“Oh! doubt not my obed­i­ence, my dread­ful obed­i­ence to him and to you!” said Mat­ilda.  “But can I, most re­spec­ted of wo­men, can I ex­per­i­ence all this ten­der­ness, this world of good­ness, and con­ceal a thought from the best of moth­ers?”

“What art thou go­ing to ut­ter?” said Isa­bella trem­bling.  “Re­col­lect thy­self, Mat­ilda.”

“No, Isa­bella,” said the Prin­cess, “I should not de­serve this in­com­par­able par­ent, if the in­most re­cesses of my soul har­boured a thought without her per­mis­sion—nay, I have of­fen­ded her; I have suffered a pas­sion to enter my heart without her avowal—but here I dis­claim it; here I vow to heaven and her—”

“My child! my child;” said Hip­pol­ita, “what words are these! what new calam­it­ies has fate in store for us!  Thou, a pas­sion?  Thou, in this hour of de­struc­tion—”

“Oh! I see all my guilt!” said Mat­ilda.  “I ab­hor my­self, if I cost my mother a pang.  She is the dearest thing I have on earth—Oh! I will never, never be­hold him more!”

“Isa­bella,” said Hip­pol­ita, “thou art con­scious to this un­happy secret, whatever it is.  Speak!”

“What!” cried Mat­ilda, “have I so for­feited my mother’s love, that she will not per­mit me even to speak my own guilt? oh! wretched, wretched Mat­ilda!”

“Thou art too cruel,” said Isa­bella to Hip­pol­ita: “canst thou be­hold this an­guish of a vir­tu­ous mind, and not com­mis­er­ate it?”

“Not pity my child!” said Hip­pol­ita, catch­ing Mat­ilda in her arms—“Oh! I know she is good, she is all vir­tue, all ten­der­ness, and duty.  I do for­give thee, my ex­cel­lent, my only hope!”

The prin­cesses then re­vealed to Hip­pol­ita their mu­tual in­clin­a­tion for Theodore, and the pur­pose of Isa­bella to resign him to Mat­ilda.  Hip­pol­ita blamed their im­prudence, and showed them the im­prob­ab­il­ity that either father would con­sent to be­stow his heir­ess on so poor a man, though nobly born.  Some com­fort it gave her to find their pas­sion of so re­cent a date, and that Theodore had had but little cause to sus­pect it in either.  She strictly en­joined them to avoid all cor­res­pond­ence with him.  This Mat­ilda fer­vently prom­ised: but Isa­bella, who flattered her­self that she meant no more than to pro­mote his union with her friend, could not de­term­ine to avoid him; and made no reply.

“I will go to the con­vent,” said Hip­pol­ita, “and or­der new masses to be said for a de­liv­er­ance from these calam­it­ies.”

“Oh! my mother,” said Mat­ilda, “you mean to quit us: you mean to take sanc­tu­ary, and to give my father an op­por­tun­ity of pur­su­ing his fatal in­ten­tion.  Alas! on my knees I sup­plic­ate you to for­bear; will you leave me a prey to Fre­deric?  I will fol­low you to the con­vent.”

“Be at peace, my child,” said Hip­pol­ita: “I will re­turn in­stantly.  I will never aban­don thee, un­til I know it is the will of heaven, and for thy be­ne­fit.”

“Do not de­ceive me,” said Mat­ilda.  “I will not marry Fre­deric un­til thou com­mand­est it.  Alas! what will be­come of me?”

“Why that ex­clam­a­tion?” said Hip­pol­ita.  “I have prom­ised thee to re­turn—”

“Ah! my mother,” replied Mat­ilda, “stay and save me from my­self.  A frown from thee can do more than all my father’s sever­ity.  I have given away my heart, and you alone can make me re­call it.”

“No more,” said Hip­pol­ita; “thou must not re­lapse, Mat­ilda.”

“I can quit Theodore,” said she, “but must I wed an­other? let me at­tend thee to the al­tar, and shut my­self from the world forever.”

“Thy fate de­pends on thy father,” said Hip­pol­ita; “I have ill-be­stowed my ten­der­ness, if it has taught thee to revere aught bey­ond him.  Adieu! my child: I go to pray for thee.”

Hip­pol­ita’s real pur­pose was to de­mand of Jerome, whether in con­science she might not con­sent to the di­vorce.  She had oft urged Man­fred to resign the prin­cip­al­ity, which the del­ic­acy of her con­science rendered an hourly bur­den to her.  These scruples con­curred to make the sep­ar­a­tion from her hus­band ap­pear less dread­ful to her than it would have seemed in any other situ­ation.

Jerome, at quit­ting the castle overnight, had ques­tioned Theodore severely why he had ac­cused him to Man­fred of be­ing privy to his es­cape.  Theodore owned it had been with design to pre­vent Man­fred’s sus­pi­cion from alight­ing on Mat­ilda; and ad­ded, the holi­ness of Jerome’s life and char­ac­ter se­cured him from the tyr­ant’s wrath.  Jerome was heart­ily grieved to dis­cover his son’s in­clin­a­tion for that prin­cess; and leav­ing him to his rest, prom­ised in the morn­ing to ac­quaint him with im­port­ant reas­ons for con­quer­ing his pas­sion.

Theodore, like Isa­bella, was too re­cently ac­quain­ted with par­ental au­thor­ity to sub­mit to its de­cisions against the im­pulse of his heart.  He had little curi­os­ity to learn the friar’s reas­ons, and less dis­pos­i­tion to obey them.  The lovely Mat­ilda had made stronger im­pres­sions on him than fi­lial af­fec­tion.  All night he pleased him­self with vis­ions of love; and it was not till late after the morn­ing-of­fice, that he re­col­lec­ted the friar’s com­mands to at­tend him at Alf­onso’s tomb.

“Young man,” said Jerome, when he saw him, “this tardi­ness does not please me.  Have a father’s com­mands already so little weight?”

Theodore made awk­ward ex­cuses, and at­trib­uted his delay to hav­ing over­slept him­self.

“And on whom were thy dreams em­ployed?” said the friar sternly.  His son blushed.  “Come, come,” re­sumed the friar, “in­con­sid­er­ate youth, this must not be; erad­ic­ate this guilty pas­sion from thy breast—”

“Guilty pas­sion!” cried Theodore: “Can guilt dwell with in­no­cent beauty and vir­tu­ous mod­esty?”

“It is sin­ful,” replied the friar, “to cher­ish those whom heaven has doomed to de­struc­tion.  A tyr­ant’s race must be swept from the earth to the third and fourth gen­er­a­tion.”

“Will heaven visit the in­no­cent for the crimes of the guilty?” said Theodore.  “The fair Mat­ilda has vir­tues enough—”

“To undo thee:” in­ter­rup­ted Jerome.  “Hast thou so soon for­got­ten that twice the sav­age Man­fred has pro­nounced thy sen­tence?”

“Nor have I for­got­ten, sir,” said Theodore, “that the char­ity of his daugh­ter de­livered me from his power.  I can for­get in­jur­ies, but never be­ne­fits.”

“The in­jur­ies thou hast re­ceived from Man­fred’s race,” said the friar, “are bey­ond what thou canst con­ceive.  Reply not, but view this holy im­age!  Beneath this marble monu­ment rest the ashes of the good Alf­onso; a prince ad­orned with every vir­tue: the father of his people! the de­light of man­kind!  Kneel, head­strong boy, and list, while a father un­folds a tale of hor­ror that will ex­pel every sen­ti­ment from thy soul, but sen­sa­tions of sac­red ven­geance—Alf­onso! much in­jured prince! let thy un­sat­is­fied shade sit aw­ful on the troubled air, while these trem­bling lips—Ha! who comes there?—”

“The most wretched of wo­men!” said Hip­pol­ita, en­ter­ing the choir.  “Good Father, art thou at leis­ure?—but why this kneel­ing youth? what means the hor­ror im­prin­ted on each coun­ten­ance? why at this ven­er­able tomb—alas! hast thou seen aught?”

“We were pour­ing forth our oris­ons to heaven,” replied the friar, with some con­fu­sion, “to put an end to the woes of this de­plor­able province.  Join with us, Lady! thy spot­less soul may ob­tain an ex­emp­tion from the judg­ments which the portents of these days but too speak­ingly de­nounce against thy house.”

“I pray fer­vently to heaven to di­vert them,” said the pi­ous Prin­cess.  “Thou know­est it has been the oc­cu­pa­tion of my life to wrest a bless­ing for my Lord and my harm­less chil­dren.—One alas! is taken from me! would heaven but hear me for my poor Mat­ilda!  Father! in­ter­cede for her!”

“Every heart will bless her,” cried Theodore with rap­ture.

“Be dumb, rash youth!” said Jerome.  “And thou, fond Prin­cess, con­tend not with the Powers above! the Lord giv­eth, and the Lord taketh away: bless His holy name, and sub­mit to his de­crees.”

“I do most de­voutly,” said Hip­pol­ita; “but will He not spare my only com­fort? must Mat­ilda per­ish too?—ah!  Father, I came—but dis­miss thy son.  No ear but thine must hear what I have to ut­ter.”

“May heaven grant thy every wish, most ex­cel­lent Prin­cess!” said Theodore re­tir­ing.  Jerome frowned.

Hip­pol­ita then ac­quain­ted the friar with the pro­posal she had sug­ges­ted to Man­fred, his ap­prob­a­tion of it, and the tender of Mat­ilda that he was gone to make to Fre­deric.  Jerome could not con­ceal his dis­like of the no­tion, which he covered un­der pre­tence of the im­prob­ab­il­ity that Fre­deric, the nearest of blood to Alf­onso, and who was come to claim his suc­ces­sion, would yield to an al­li­ance with the usurper of his right.  But noth­ing could equal the per­plex­ity of the friar, when Hip­pol­ita con­fessed her read­i­ness not to op­pose the sep­ar­a­tion, and de­man­ded his opin­ion on the leg­al­ity of her ac­qui­es­cence.  The friar caught eagerly at her re­quest of his ad­vice, and without ex­plain­ing his aver­sion to the pro­posed mar­riage of Man­fred and Isa­bella, he painted to Hip­pol­ita in the most alarm­ing col­ours the sin­ful­ness of her con­sent, de­nounced judg­ments against her if she com­plied, and en­joined her in the severest terms to treat any such pro­pos­i­tion with every mark of in­dig­na­tion and re­fusal.

Man­fred, in the mean­time, had broken his pur­pose to Fre­deric, and pro­posed the double mar­riage.  That weak Prince, who had been struck with the charms of Mat­ilda, listened but too eagerly to the of­fer.  He for­got his enmity to Man­fred, whom he saw but little hope of dis­pos­sess­ing by force; and flat­ter­ing him­self that no is­sue might suc­ceed from the union of his daugh­ter with the tyr­ant, he looked upon his own suc­ces­sion to the prin­cip­al­ity as fa­cil­it­ated by wed­ding Mat­ilda.  He made faint op­pos­i­tion to the pro­posal; af­fect­ing, for form only, not to ac­qui­esce un­less Hip­pol­ita should con­sent to the di­vorce.  Man­fred took that upon him­self.

Trans­por­ted with his suc­cess, and im­pa­tient to see him­self in a situ­ation to ex­pect sons, he hastened to his wife’s apart­ment, de­term­ined to ex­tort her com­pli­ance.  He learned with in­dig­na­tion that she was ab­sent at the con­vent.  His guilt sug­ges­ted to him that she had prob­ably been in­formed by Isa­bella of his pur­pose.  He doubted whether her re­tire­ment to the con­vent did not im­port an in­ten­tion of re­main­ing there, un­til she could raise obstacles to their di­vorce; and the sus­pi­cions he had already en­ter­tained of Jerome, made him ap­pre­hend that the friar would not only tra­verse his views, but might have in­spired Hip­pol­ita with the res­ol­u­tion of talk­ing sanc­tu­ary.  Im­pa­tient to un­ravel this clue, and to de­feat its suc­cess, Man­fred hastened to the con­vent, and ar­rived there as the friar was earn­estly ex­hort­ing the Prin­cess never to yield to the di­vorce.

“Madam,” said Man­fred, “what busi­ness drew you hither? why did you not await my re­turn from the Mar­quis?”

“I came to im­plore a bless­ing on your coun­cils,” replied Hip­pol­ita.

“My coun­cils do not need a friar’s in­ter­ven­tion,” said Man­fred; “and of all men liv­ing is that hoary traitor the only one whom you de­light to con­fer with?”

“Pro­fane Prince!” said Jerome; “is it at the al­tar that thou choosest to in­sult the ser­vants of the al­tar?—but, Man­fred, thy im­pi­ous schemes are known.  Heaven and this vir­tu­ous lady know them—nay, frown not, Prince.  The Church des­pises thy men­aces.  Her thun­ders will be heard above thy wrath.  Dare to pro­ceed in thy cursed pur­pose of a di­vorce, un­til her sen­tence be known, and here I lance her ana­thema at thy head.”

“Au­da­cious rebel!” said Man­fred, en­deav­our­ing to con­ceal the awe with which the friar’s words in­spired him.  “Dost thou pre­sume to threaten thy law­ful Prince?”

“Thou art no law­ful Prince,” said Jerome; “thou art no Prince—go, dis­cuss thy claim with Fre­deric; and when that is done—”

“It is done,” replied Man­fred; “Fre­deric ac­cepts Mat­ilda’s hand, and is con­tent to waive his claim, un­less I have no male is­sue”—as he spoke those words three drops of blood fell from the nose of Alf­onso’s statue.  Man­fred turned pale, and the Prin­cess sank on her knees.

“Be­hold!” said the friar; “mark this mi­ra­cu­lous in­dic­a­tion that the blood of Alf­onso will never mix with that of Man­fred!”

“My gra­cious Lord,” said Hip­pol­ita, “let us sub­mit ourselves to heaven.  Think not thy ever obed­i­ent wife rebels against thy au­thor­ity.  I have no will but that of my Lord and the Church.  To that revered tribunal let us ap­peal.  It does not de­pend on us to burst the bonds that unite us.  If the Church shall ap­prove the dis­sol­u­tion of our mar­riage, be it so—I have but few years, and those of sor­row, to pass.  Where can they be worn away so well as at the foot of this al­tar, in pray­ers for thine and Mat­ilda’s safety?”

“But thou shalt not re­main here un­til then,” said Man­fred.  “Re­pair with me to the castle, and there I will ad­vise on the proper meas­ures for a di­vorce;—but this med­dling friar comes not thither; my hos­pit­able roof shall never more har­bour a traitor—and for thy Rev­er­ence’s off­spring,” con­tin­ued he, “I ban­ish him from my domin­ions.  He, I ween, is no sac­red per­son­age, nor un­der the pro­tec­tion of the Church.  Who­ever weds Isa­bella, it shall not be Father Fal­con­ara’s star­ted-up son.”

“They start up,” said the friar, “who are sud­denly be­held in the seat of law­ful Princes; but they wither away like the grass, and their place knows them no more.”

Man­fred, cast­ing a look of scorn at the friar, led Hip­pol­ita forth; but at the door of the church whispered one of his at­tend­ants to re­main con­cealed about the con­vent, and bring him in­stant no­tice, if any­one from the castle should re­pair thither.

V

Every re­flec­tion which Man­fred made on the friar’s be­ha­viour con­spired to per­suade him that Jerome was privy to an amour between Isa­bella and Theodore.  But Jerome’s new pre­sump­tion, so dis­son­ant from his former meek­ness, sug­ges­ted still deeper ap­pre­hen­sions.  The Prince even sus­pec­ted that the friar de­pended on some secret sup­port from Fre­deric, whose ar­rival, co­in­cid­ing with the novel ap­pear­ance of Theodore, seemed to be­speak a cor­res­pond­ence.  Still more was he troubled with the re­semb­lance of Theodore to Alf­onso’s por­trait.  The lat­ter he knew had un­ques­tion­ably died without is­sue.  Fre­deric had con­sen­ted to be­stow Isa­bella on him.  These con­tra­dic­tions agit­ated his mind with num­ber­less pangs.

He saw but two meth­ods of ex­tric­at­ing him­self from his dif­fi­culties.  The one was to resign his domin­ions to the Mar­quis—pride, am­bi­tion, and his re­li­ance on an­cient proph­ecies, which had poin­ted out a pos­sib­il­ity of his pre­serving them to his pos­ter­ity, com­bated that thought.  The other was to press his mar­riage with Isa­bella.  After long ru­min­at­ing on these anxious thoughts, as he marched si­lently with Hip­pol­ita to the castle, he at last dis­coursed with that Prin­cess on the sub­ject of his dis­quiet, and used every in­sinu­at­ing and plaus­ible ar­gu­ment to ex­tract her con­sent to, even her prom­ise of pro­mot­ing the di­vorce.  Hip­pol­ita needed little per­sua­sions to bend her to his pleas­ure.  She en­deav­oured to win him over to the meas­ure of resign­ing his domin­ions; but find­ing her ex­horta­tions fruit­less, she as­sured him, that, as far as her con­science would al­low, she would raise no op­pos­i­tion to a sep­ar­a­tion, though without bet­ter foun­ded scruples than what he yet al­leged, she would not en­gage to be act­ive in de­mand­ing it.

This com­pli­ance, though in­ad­equate, was suf­fi­cient to raise Man­fred’s hopes.  He trus­ted that his power and wealth would eas­ily ad­vance his suit at the court of Rome, whither he re­solved to en­gage Fre­deric to take a jour­ney on pur­pose.  That Prince had dis­covered so much pas­sion for Mat­ilda, that Man­fred hoped to ob­tain all he wished by hold­ing out or with­draw­ing his daugh­ter’s charms, ac­cord­ing as the Mar­quis should ap­pear more or less dis­posed to co­oper­ate in his views.  Even the ab­sence of Fre­deric would be a ma­ter­ial point gained, un­til he could take fur­ther meas­ures for his se­cur­ity.

Dis­miss­ing Hip­pol­ita to her apart­ment, he re­paired to that of the Mar­quis; but cross­ing the great hall through which he was to pass he met Bi­anca.  The dam­sel he knew was in the con­fid­ence of both the young ladies.  It im­me­di­ately oc­curred to him to sift her on the sub­ject of Isa­bella and Theodore.  Calling her aside into the re­cess of the oriel win­dow of the hall, and sooth­ing her with many fair words and prom­ises, he de­man­ded of her whether she knew aught of the state of Isa­bella’s af­fec­tions.

“I! my Lord! no my Lord—yes my Lord—poor Lady! she is won­der­fully alarmed about her father’s wounds; but I tell her he will do well; don’t your High­ness think so?”

“I do not ask you,” replied Man­fred, “what she thinks about her father; but you are in her secrets.  Come, be a good girl and tell me; is there any young man—ha!—you un­der­stand me.”

“Lord bless me! un­der­stand your High­ness? no, not I.  I told her a few vul­ner­ary herbs and re­pose—”

“I am not talk­ing,” replied the Prince, im­pa­tiently, “about her father; I know he will do well.”

“Bless me, I re­joice to hear your High­ness say so; for though I thought it not right to let my young Lady des­pond, me­thought his great­ness had a wan look, and a some­thing—I re­mem­ber when young Ferdin­and was wounded by the Vene­tian—”

“Thou an­swerest from the point,” in­ter­rup­ted Man­fred; “but here, take this jewel, per­haps that may fix thy at­ten­tion—nay, no rev­er­ences; my fa­vour shall not stop here—come, tell me truly; how stands Isa­bella’s heart?”

“Well! your High­ness has such a way!” said Bi­anca, “to be sure—but can your High­ness keep a secret? if it should ever come out of your lips—”

“It shall not, it shall not,” cried Man­fred.

“Nay, but swear, your High­ness.”

“By my hal­i­dame, if it should ever be known that I said it—”

“Why, truth is truth, I do not think my Lady Isa­bella ever much af­fec­tioned my young Lord your son; yet he was a sweet youth as one should see; I am sure, if I had been a Prin­cess—but bless me!  I must at­tend my Lady Mat­ilda; she will mar­vel what is be­come of me.”

“Stay,” cried Man­fred; “thou hast not sat­is­fied my ques­tion.  Hast thou ever car­ried any mes­sage, any let­ter?”

“I! good gra­cious!” cried Bi­anca; “I carry a let­ter?  I would not to be a queen.  I hope your High­ness thinks, though I am poor, I am hon­est.  Did your High­ness never hear what Count Marsigli offered me, when he came a woo­ing to my Lady Mat­ilda?”

“I have not leis­ure,” said Man­fred, “to listen to thy tale.  I do not ques­tion thy hon­esty.  But it is thy duty to con­ceal noth­ing from me.  How long has Isa­bella been ac­quain­ted with Theodore?”

“Nay, there is noth­ing can es­cape your High­ness!” said Bi­anca; “not that I know any­thing of the mat­ter.  Theodore, to be sure, is a proper young man, and, as my Lady Mat­ilda says, the very im­age of good Alf­onso.  Has not your High­ness re­marked it?”

“Yes, yes—No—thou tor­turest me,” said Man­fred.  “Where did they meet? when?”

“Who! my Lady Mat­ilda?” said Bi­anca.

“No, no, not Mat­ilda: Isa­bella; when did Isa­bella first be­come ac­quain­ted with this Theodore!”

“Vir­gin Mary!” said Bi­anca, “how should I know?”

“Thou dost know,” said Man­fred; “and I must know; I will—”

“Lord! your High­ness is not jeal­ous of young Theodore!” said Bi­anca.

“Jeal­ous! no, no.  Why should I be jeal­ous? per­haps I mean to unite them—If I were sure Isa­bella would have no re­pug­nance.”

“Re­pug­nance! no, I’ll war­rant her,” said Bi­anca; “he is as comely a youth as ever trod on Chris­tian ground.  We are all in love with him; there is not a soul in the castle but would be re­joiced to have him for our Prince—I mean, when it shall please heaven to call your High­ness to it­self.”

“Indeed!” said Man­fred, “has it gone so far! oh! this cursed friar!—but I must not lose time—go, Bi­anca, at­tend Isa­bella; but I charge thee, not a word of what has passed.  Find out how she is af­fected to­wards Theodore; bring me good news, and that ring has a com­pan­ion.  Wait at the foot of the wind­ing stair­case: I am go­ing to visit the Mar­quis, and will talk fur­ther with thee at my re­turn.”

Man­fred, after some gen­eral con­ver­sa­tion, de­sired Fre­deric to dis­miss the two knights, his com­pan­ions, hav­ing to talk with him on ur­gent af­fairs.

As soon as they were alone, he began in art­ful guise to sound the Mar­quis on the sub­ject of Mat­ilda; and find­ing him dis­posed to his wish, he let drop hints on the dif­fi­culties that would at­tend the cel­eb­ra­tion of their mar­riage, un­less—At that in­stant Bi­anca burst into the room with a wild­ness in her look and ges­tures that spoke the ut­most ter­ror.

“Oh! my Lord, my Lord!” cried she; “we are all un­done! it is come again! it is come again!”

“What is come again?” cried Man­fred amazed.

“Oh! the hand! the Gi­ant! the hand!—sup­port me! I am ter­ri­fied out of my senses,” cried Bi­anca.  “I will not sleep in the castle to­night.  Where shall I go? my things may come after me to­mor­row—would I had been con­tent to wed Francesco! this comes of am­bi­tion!”

“What has ter­ri­fied thee thus, young wo­man?” said the Mar­quis.  “Thou art safe here; be not alarmed.”

“Oh! your Great­ness is won­der­fully good,” said Bi­anca, “but I dare not—no, pray let me go—I had rather leave everything be­hind me, than stay an­other hour un­der this roof.”

“Go to, thou hast lost thy senses,” said Man­fred.  “In­ter­rupt us not; we were com­mun­ing on im­port­ant mat­ters—My Lord, this wench is sub­ject to fits—Come with me, Bi­anca.”

“Oh! the saints!  No,” said Bi­anca, “for cer­tain it comes to warn your High­ness; why should it ap­pear to me else?  I say my pray­ers morn­ing and even­ing—oh! if your High­ness had be­lieved Diego!  ’Tis the same hand that he saw the foot to in the gal­lery-cham­ber—Father Jerome has of­ten told us the proph­ecy would be out one of these days—‘Bi­anca,’ said he, ‘mark my words—’ ”

“Thou ravest,” said Man­fred, in a rage; “be gone, and keep these fool­er­ies to frighten thy com­pan­ions.”

“What! my Lord,” cried Bi­anca, “do you think I have seen noth­ing? go to the foot of the great stairs your­self—as I live I saw it.”

“Saw what? tell us, fair maid, what thou hast seen,” said Fre­deric.

“Can your High­ness listen,” said Man­fred, “to the de­li­rium of a silly wench, who has heard stor­ies of ap­par­i­tions un­til she be­lieves them?”

“This is more than fancy,” said the Mar­quis; “her ter­ror is too nat­ural and too strongly im­pressed to be the work of ima­gin­a­tion.  Tell us, fair maiden, what it is has moved thee thus?”

“Yes, my Lord, thank your Great­ness,” said Bi­anca; “I be­lieve I look very pale; I shall be bet­ter when I have re­covered my­self—I was go­ing to my Lady Isa­bella’s cham­ber, by his High­ness’s or­der—”

“We do not want the cir­cum­stances,” in­ter­rup­ted Man­fred.  “Since his High­ness will have it so, pro­ceed; but be brief.”

“Lord! your High­ness thwarts one so!” replied Bi­anca; “I fear my hair—I am sure I never in my life—well! as I was telling your Great­ness, I was go­ing by his High­ness’s or­der to my Lady Isa­bella’s cham­ber; she lies in the watchet-col­oured cham­ber, on the right hand, one pair of stairs: so when I came to the great stairs—I was look­ing on his High­ness’s present here—”

“Grant me pa­tience!” said Man­fred, “will this wench never come to the point? what im­ports it to the Mar­quis, that I gave thee a bauble for thy faith­ful at­tend­ance on my daugh­ter? we want to know what thou saw­est.”

“I was go­ing to tell your High­ness,” said Bi­anca, “if you would per­mit me.  So as I was rub­bing the ring—I am sure I had not gone up three steps, but I heard the rat­tling of ar­mour; for all the world such a clat­ter as Diego says he heard when the Gi­ant turned him about in the gal­lery-cham­ber.”

“What Gi­ant is this, my Lord?” said the Mar­quis; “is your castle haunted by gi­ants and gob­lins?”

“Lord! what, has not your Great­ness heard the story of the Gi­ant in the gal­lery-cham­ber?” cried Bi­anca.  “I mar­vel his High­ness has not told you; may­hap you do not know there is a proph­ecy—”

“This tri­fling is in­tol­er­able,” in­ter­rup­ted Man­fred.  “Let us dis­miss this silly wench, my Lord! we have more im­port­ant af­fairs to dis­cuss.”

“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 to­mor­row; 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?”

“I can, I do; and may heaven con­firm it!” said Mat­ilda; “but while I have life to ask it—oh! my mother! what will she feel?  Will you com­fort her, my Lord?  Will you not put her away?  Indeed she loves you!  Oh, I am faint! bear me to the castle.  Can I live to have her close my eyes?”

Theodore and the monks be­sought her earn­estly to suf­fer her­self to be borne into the con­vent; but her in­stances were so press­ing to be car­ried to the castle, that pla­cing her on a lit­ter, they con­veyed her thither as she re­ques­ted.  Theodore, sup­port­ing her head with his arm, and hanging over her in an agony of des­pair­ing love, still en­deav­oured to in­spire her with hopes of life.  Jerome, on the other side, com­for­ted her with dis­courses of heaven, and hold­ing a cru­ci­fix be­fore her, which she bathed with in­no­cent tears, pre­pared her for her pas­sage to im­mor­tal­ity.  Man­fred, plunged in the deep­est af­flic­tion, fol­lowed the lit­ter in des­pair.

Ere they reached the castle, Hip­pol­ita, in­formed of the dread­ful cata­strophe, had flown to meet her murdered child; but when she saw the af­flic­ted pro­ces­sion, the migh­ti­ness of her grief de­prived her of her senses, and she fell life­less to the earth in a swoon.  Isa­bella and Fre­deric, who at­ten­ded her, were over­whelmed in al­most equal sor­row.  Mat­ilda alone seemed in­sens­ible to her own situ­ation: every thought was lost in ten­der­ness for her mother.

Or­der­ing the lit­ter to stop, as soon as Hip­pol­ita was brought to her­self, she asked for her father.  He ap­proached, un­able to speak.  Mat­ilda, seiz­ing his hand and her mother’s, locked them in her own, and then clasped them to her heart.  Man­fred could not sup­port this act of pathetic piety.  He dashed him­self on the ground, and cursed the day he was born.  Isa­bella, ap­pre­hens­ive that these struggles of pas­sion were more than Mat­ilda could sup­port, took upon her­self to or­der Man­fred to be borne to his apart­ment, while she caused Mat­ilda to be con­veyed to the nearest cham­ber.  Hip­pol­ita, scarce more alive than her daugh­ter, was re­gard­less of everything but her; but when the tender Isa­bella’s care would have like­wise re­moved her, while the sur­geons ex­amined Mat­ilda’s wound, she cried,

“Re­move me! never, never!  I lived but in her, and will ex­pire with her.”

Mat­ilda raised her eyes at her mother’s voice, but closed them again without speak­ing.  Her sink­ing pulse and the damp cold­ness of her hand soon dis­pelled all hopes of re­cov­ery.  Theodore fol­lowed the sur­geons into the outer cham­ber, and heard them pro­nounce the fatal sen­tence with a trans­port equal to frenzy.

“Since she can­not live mine,” cried he, “at least she shall be mine in death!  Father!  Jerome! will you not join our hands?” cried he to the friar, who, with the Mar­quis, had ac­com­pan­ied the sur­geons.

“What means thy dis­trac­ted rash­ness?” said Jerome.  “Is this an hour for mar­riage?”

“It is, it is,” cried Theodore.  “Alas! there is no other!”

“Young man, thou art too un­ad­vised,” said Fre­deric.  “Dost thou think we are to listen to thy fond trans­ports in this hour of fate?  What pre­ten­sions hast thou to the Prin­cess?”

“Those of a Prince,” said Theodore; “of the sov­er­eign of Otranto.  This rev­er­end man, my father, has in­formed me who I am.”

“Thou ravest,” said the Mar­quis.  “There is no Prince of Otranto but my­self, now Man­fred, by murder, by sac­ri­le­gious murder, has for­feited all pre­ten­sions.”

“My Lord,” said Jerome, as­sum­ing an air of com­mand, “he tells you true.  It was not my pur­pose the secret should have been di­vulged so soon, but fate presses on­ward to its work.  What his hot­headed pas­sion has re­vealed, my tongue con­firms.  Know, Prince, that when Alf­onso set sail for the Holy Land—”

“Is this a sea­son for ex­plan­a­tions?” cried Theodore.  “Father, come and unite me to the Prin­cess; she shall be mine!  In every other thing I will du­ti­fully obey you.  My life! my ad­ored Mat­ilda!” con­tin­ued Theodore, rush­ing back into the in­ner cham­ber, “will you not be mine?  Will you not bless your—”

Isa­bella made signs to him to be si­lent, ap­pre­hend­ing the Prin­cess was near her end.

“What, is she dead?” cried Theodore; “is it pos­sible!”

The vi­ol­ence of his ex­clam­a­tions brought Mat­ilda to her­self.  Lift­ing up her eyes, she looked round for her mother.

“Life of my soul, I am here!” cried Hip­pol­ita; “think not I will quit thee!”

“Oh! you are too good,” said Mat­ilda.  “But weep not for me, my mother!  I am go­ing where sor­row never dwells—Isa­bella, thou hast loved me; wouldst thou not sup­ply my fond­ness to this dear, dear wo­man?  Indeed I am faint!”

“Oh! my child! my child!” said Hip­pol­ita in a flood of tears, “can I not with­hold thee a mo­ment?”

“It will not be,” said Mat­ilda; “com­mend me to heaven—Where is my father? for­give him, dearest mother—for­give him my death; it was an er­ror.  Oh!  I had for­got­ten—dearest mother, I vowed never to see Theodore more—per­haps that has drawn down this calam­ity—but it was not in­ten­tional—can you par­don me?”

“Oh! wound not my ag­on­ising soul!” said Hip­pol­ita; “thou never couldst of­fend me—Alas! she faints! help! help!”

“I would say some­thing more,” said Mat­ilda, strug­gling, “but it can­not be—Isa­bella—Theodore—for my sake—Oh!—” she ex­pired.

Isa­bella and her wo­men tore Hip­pol­ita from the corse; but Theodore threatened de­struc­tion to all who at­temp­ted to re­move him from it.  He prin­ted a thou­sand kisses on her clay-cold hands, and uttered every ex­pres­sion that des­pair­ing love could dic­tate.

Isa­bella, in the mean­time, was ac­com­pa­ny­ing the af­flic­ted Hip­pol­ita to her apart­ment; but, in the middle of the court, they were met by Man­fred, who, dis­trac­ted with his own thoughts, and anxious once more to be­hold his daugh­ter, was ad­van­cing to the cham­ber where she lay.  As the moon was now at its height, he read in the coun­ten­ances of this un­happy com­pany the event he dreaded.

“What! is she dead?” cried he in wild con­fu­sion.  A clap of thun­der at that in­stant shook the castle to its found­a­tions; the earth rocked, and the clank of more than mor­tal ar­mour was heard be­hind.  Fre­deric and Jerome thought the last day was at hand.  The lat­ter, for­cing Theodore along with them, rushed into the court.  The mo­ment Theodore ap­peared, the walls of the castle be­hind Man­fred were thrown down with a mighty force, and the form of Alf­onso, dilated to an im­mense mag­nitude, ap­peared in the centre of the ru­ins.

“Be­hold in Theodore the true heir of Alf­onso!” said the vis­ion: And hav­ing pro­nounced those words, ac­com­pan­ied by a clap of thun­der, it as­cen­ded sol­emnly to­wards heaven, where the clouds part­ing asun­der, the form of St. Nich­olas was seen, and re­ceiv­ing Alf­onso’s shade, they were soon wrapt from mor­tal eyes in a blaze of glory.

The be­hold­ers fell pros­trate on their faces, ac­know­ledging the di­vine will.  The first that broke si­lence was Hip­pol­ita.

“My Lord,” said she to the des­pond­ing Man­fred, “be­hold the van­ity of hu­man great­ness!  Con­rad is gone!  Mat­ilda is no more!  In Theodore we view the true Prince of Otranto.  By what mir­acle he is so I know not—suf­fice it to us, our doom is pro­nounced! shall we not, can we but ded­ic­ate the few de­plor­able hours we have to live, in de­prec­at­ing the fur­ther wrath of heaven? heaven ejects us—whither can we fly, but to yon holy cells that yet of­fer us a re­treat.”

“Thou guilt­less but un­happy wo­man! un­happy by my crimes!” replied Man­fred, “my heart at last is open to thy de­vout ad­mon­i­tions.  Oh! could—but it can­not be—ye are lost in won­der—let me at last do justice on my­self!  To heap shame on my own head is all the sat­is­fac­tion I have left to of­fer to of­fen­ded heaven.  My story has drawn down these judg­ments: Let my con­fes­sion atone—but, ah! what can atone for usurp­a­tion and a murdered child? a child murdered in a con­sec­rated place?  List, sirs, and may this bloody re­cord be a warn­ing to fu­ture tyr­ants!”

“Alf­onso, ye all know, died in the Holy Land—ye would in­ter­rupt me; ye would say he came not fairly to his end—it is most true—why else this bit­ter cup which Man­fred must drink to the dregs.  Ri­cardo, my grand­father, was his cham­ber­lain—I would draw a veil over my an­cestor’s crimes—but it is in vain!  Alf­onso died by poison.  A fic­ti­tious will de­clared Ri­cardo his heir.  His crimes pur­sued him—yet he lost no Con­rad, no Mat­ilda!  I pay the price of usurp­a­tion for all!  A storm over­took him.  Haunted by his guilt he vowed to St. Nich­olas to found a church and two con­vents, if he lived to reach Otranto.  The sac­ri­fice was ac­cep­ted: the saint ap­peared to him in a dream, and prom­ised that Ri­cardo’s pos­ter­ity should reign in Otranto un­til the right­ful owner should be grown too large to in­habit the castle, and as long as is­sue male from Ri­cardo’s loins should re­main to en­joy it—alas! alas! nor male nor fe­male, ex­cept my­self, re­mains of all his wretched race!  I have done—the woes of these three days speak the rest.  How this young man can be Alf­onso’s heir I know not—yet I do not doubt it.  His are these domin­ions; I resign them—yet I knew not Alf­onso had an heir—I ques­tion not the will of heaven—poverty and prayer must fill up the woe­ful space, un­til Man­fred shall be summoned to Ri­cardo.”

“What re­mains is my part to de­clare,” said Jerome.  “When Alf­onso set sail for the Holy Land he was driven by a storm to the coast of Si­cily.  The other ves­sel, which bore Ri­cardo and his train, as your Lord­ship must have heard, was sep­ar­ated from him.”

“It is most true,” said Man­fred; “and the title you give me is more than an out­cast can claim—well! be it so—pro­ceed.”

Jerome blushed, and con­tin­ued.  “For three months Lord Alf­onso was wind-bound in Si­cily.  There he be­came en­am­oured of a fair vir­gin named Vict­oria.  He was too pi­ous to tempt her to for­bid­den pleas­ures.  They were mar­ried.  Yet deem­ing this amour in­con­gru­ous with the holy vow of arms by which he was bound, he de­term­ined to con­ceal their nup­tials un­til his re­turn from the Cru­sade, when he pur­posed to seek and ac­know­ledge her for his law­ful wife.  He left her preg­nant.  Dur­ing his ab­sence she was de­livered of a daugh­ter.  But scarce had she felt a mother’s pangs ere she heard the fatal ru­mour of her Lord’s death, and the suc­ces­sion of Ri­cardo.  What could a friend­less, help­less wo­man do?  Would her testi­mony avail?—yet, my lord, I have an au­then­tic writ­ing—”

“It needs not,” said Man­fred; “the hor­rors of these days, the vis­ion we have but now seen, all cor­rob­or­ate thy evid­ence bey­ond a thou­sand parch­ments.  Mat­ilda’s death and my ex­pul­sion—”

“Be com­posed, my Lord,” said Hip­pol­ita; “this holy man did not mean to re­call your griefs.”  Jerome pro­ceeded.

“I shall not dwell on what is need­less.  The daugh­ter of which Vict­oria was de­livered, was at her ma­tur­ity be­stowed in mar­riage on me.  Vict­oria died; and the secret re­mained locked in my breast.  Theodore’s nar­rat­ive has told the rest.”

The friar ceased.  The dis­con­sol­ate com­pany re­tired to the re­main­ing part of the castle.  In the morn­ing Man­fred signed his ab­dic­a­tion of the prin­cip­al­ity, with the ap­prob­a­tion of Hip­pol­ita, and each took on them the habit of re­li­gion in the neigh­bour­ing con­vents.  Fre­deric offered his daugh­ter to the new Prince, which Hip­pol­ita’s ten­der­ness for Isa­bella con­curred to pro­mote.  But Theodore’s grief was too fresh to ad­mit the thought of an­other love; and it was not un­til after fre­quent dis­courses with Isa­bella of his dear Mat­ilda, that he was per­suaded he could know no hap­pi­ness but in the so­ci­ety of one with whom he could forever in­dulge the mel­an­choly that had taken pos­ses­sion of his soul.