The resemblance between Emily and her unfortunate aunt had frequently
been observed by Laurentini, and had occasioned the singular behaviour,
which had formerly alarmed her; but it was in the nun's dying hour, when
her conscience gave her perpetually the idea of the Marchioness, that
she became more sensible, than ever, of this likeness, and, in her
phrensy, deemed it no resemblance of the person she had injured, but the
original herself. The bold assertion, that had followed, on the recovery
of her senses, that Emily was the daughter of the Marchioness de
Villeroi, arose from a suspicion that she was so; for, knowing that her
rival, when she married the Marquis, was attached to another lover, she
had scarcely scrupled to believe, that her honour had been sacrificed,
like her own, to an unresisted passion.
Of a crime, however, to which Emily had suspected, from her phrensied
confession of murder, that she had been instrumental in the castle of
Udolpho, Laurentini was innocent; and she had herself been deceived,
concerning the spectacle, that formerly occasioned her so much terror,
and had since compelled her, for a while, to attribute the horrors of
the nun to a consciousness of a murder, committed in that castle.
It may be remembered, that, in a chamber of Udolpho, hung a black
veil, whose singular situation had excited Emily's curiosity, and which
afterwards disclosed an object, that had overwhelmed her with horror;
for, on lifting it, there appeared, instead of the picture she had
expected, within a recess of the wall, a human figure of ghastly
paleness, stretched at its length, and dressed in the habiliments of
the grave. What added to the horror of the spectacle, was, that the face
appeared partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which were visible on
the features and hands. On such an object, it will be readily believed,
that no person could endure to look twice. Emily, it may be recollected,
had, after the first glance, let the veil drop, and her terror had
prevented her from ever after provoking a renewal of such suffering, as
she had then experienced.
Had she dared to look again, her delusion and
her fears would have vanished together, and she would have perceived,
that the figure before her was not human, but formed of wax. The history
of it is somewhat extraordinary, though not without example in the
records of that fierce severity, which monkish superstition has
sometimes inflicted on mankind. A member of the house of Udolpho, having
committed some offence against the prerogative of the church, had been
condemned to the penance of contemplating, during certain hours of the
day, a waxen image, made to resemble a human body in the state, to which
it is reduced after death.