The Castle of Otranto

by Horace Walpole

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

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

The next transition of his soul was to exquisite villainy.

“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.”