The marquis, meanwhile, whose indefatigable search after Julia failed
of success, was successively the slave of alternate passions, and he
poured forth the spleen of disappointment on his unhappy domestics.
The marchioness, who may now more properly be called Maria de
Vellorno, inflamed, by artful insinuations, the passions already
irritated, and heightened with cruel triumph his resentment towards
Julia and Madame de Menon. She represented, what his feelings too
acutely acknowledged,--that by the obstinate disobedience of the
first, and the machinations of the last, a priest had been enabled to
arrest his authority as a father--to insult the sacred honor of his
nobility--and to overturn at once his proudest schemes of power and
ambition. She declared it her opinion, that the Abate was acquainted
with the place of Julia's present retreat, and upbraided the marquis
with want of spirit in thus submitting to be outwitted by a priest,
and forbearing an appeal to the pope, whose authority would compel the
Abate to restore Julia.
This reproach stung the very soul of the marquis; he felt all its
force, and was at the same time conscious of his inability to obviate
it. The effect of his crimes now fell in severe punishment upon his
own head. The threatened secret, which was no other than the
imprisonment of the marchioness, arrested his arm of vengeance, and
compelled him to submit to insult and disappointment. But the reproach
of Maria sunk deep in his mind; it fomented his pride into redoubled
fury, and he now repelled with disdain the idea of submission.
He revolved the means which might effect his purpose--he saw but
one--this was the death of the marchioness.
The commission of one crime often requires the perpetration of
another. When once we enter on the ladyrinth of vice, we can seldom
return, but are led on, through correspondent mazes, to destruction.
To obviate the effect of his first crime, it was now necessary the
marquis should commit a second, and conceal the imprisonment of the
marchioness by her murder. Himself the only living witness of her
existence, when she was removed, the allegations of the Padre Abate
would by this means be unsupported by any proof, and he might then
boldly appeal to the pope for the restoration of his child.
He mused upon this scheme, and the more he accustomed his mind to
contemplate it, the less scrupulous he became. The crime from which he
would formerly have shrunk, he now surveyed with a steady eye. The
fury of his passions, unaccustomed to resistance, uniting with the
force of what ambition termed necessity--urged him to the deed, and he
determined upon the murder of his wife. The means of effecting his
purpose were easy and various; but as he was not yet so entirely
hardened as to be able to view her dying pangs, and embrue his own
hands in her blood, he chose to dispatch her by means of poison, which
he resolved to mingle in her food.