The Monk (Vintage Classics)

by Matthew Gregory Lewis

and curses!—And whom am I to thank for this? What seduced me into crimes, whose bare remembrance makes me shudder? Fatal witch! was it not thy beauty? Have you not plunged my soul into infamy? Have you not made me a perjured hypocrite, a ravisher, an assassin? Nay, at this moment, does not that angel look bid me despair of God’s forgiveness? Oh! when I stand before his judgment-throne, that look will suffice to damn me! You will tell my judge, that you were happy, till I saw you; that you were innocent, till I polluted you! You will come with those tearful eyes, those cheeks pale and ghastly, those hands lifted in supplication, as when you sought from me that mercy which I gave not! Then will my perdition be certain! Then will come your mother’s ghost, and hurl me down into the dwellings of fiends, and flames, and furies, and everlasting torments! And ’tis you who will accuse me! ’tis you who will cause my eternal anguish!—you, wretched girl! you! you!” As he thundered out these words, he violently grasped Antonia’s arm, and spurned the earth with delirious fury. Supposing his brain to be turned, Antonia sank in terror upon her knees; she lifted up her hands, and her voice almost died away ere she could give it utterance.