The Bronze Statue, or, The Virgin's Kiss — page 97: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE BRONZE STATUE. | 95 ment than she had yet exhibited| Lady, holding the lamp high up so as throughout her interview with the| to afford her as complete a view of the maiden, «I beseech you, in the same| place as possible, ‘around you are the manner in which I ere now enjoined sepulehres of the proud family of Al- you to maintain an inviolable secrecy | tendorf. Every Baron and every Ba- respecting myself,—I beseech you, I| roness who have borne that haughty say, to put a seal upon your lips with | name, and who have paid the debt of regard to all the mysterious or terrible | nature, are interred within thesé vaults things that you have this night beholden | and have received the vain posthumous in Altendurf Castle. The maze of pas-| honor of a statue, a monument, or a sages which you have threaded, the| mural tablet.’ Bronze Statue before which you have| The Carmelite and Angela had halt- knelt, and now, this dread mechanism | ed, as the former thus spoke, in the im- that hus filled your mind with vague| mediate vicinity of a tomb of black horror and ineffable forebodings,—all, | marble with the sculptured recumbent all must be regarded by you as some-| effigy of a lady upon it, extended, and thing whereupon it is even sinful to) with the hands slightly raised and joined think, but concerning which it would|as if in prayer. Upon the side of the be darkly, deeply criminal to breathe a} monument there was an inscription single word to the ear of another ”’ ‘formed of inlaid brass; and as the lamp ‘Fear nought. lady, from any indis-| shed its rays on the bright metallic let- cretion on my part,’ said Angela, her | ters, Angela read with ease the follow- tone and manner recovering a coasider- | ing lines: | —— 9s —__ -— —__ able portion of their wonted firmness. | Here rest the remains ‘T owe you too Jarge adebt of gratitude | eile Ry Sie gs RE ae A for all you have said and done t0r ne whom Death did snatch away, this night, to disobey your injunctions.’ in the spring-tide of her youth and the glory of her ‘Again I thank thee, my dear child,’ beauty, irom-a peg: oy gag o> we : ioved most tenderly. returned the Carmelite. ‘ But come— Peace be to her soul—to her ashes peace ! let us leave this dreadful place; let us Died August 2oth, 1419—Aged 20. continue our way! It was at first my} ‘The White Lady did not interrupt intention to have implored you to blind- | Angela while she was reading the above fold your eyes ere you quitted the cham- | inscription: but when she perceived, ber where you awoke to consciousness | by the direction which the maiden’s after your swoon; but the frankness, | eyes took from the brazen epitaph to the candor, the willing promptitude | the sculptured figure lying along on the with which you there assented to all| summit of the tomb, that she had fin- the injunctions I gave you respecting | ished the perusal, she said in a low, myself, determined me not to insult nor deep tone, ‘This is the monument of impair the generous confidence which | the present Baron’s wife—consequently you placed in me, by subjecting you to | of Lord Rodolph’s mother !’ such a process. I therefore preferred| ‘Alas! poor lady,’ observed Angela, that you should everencounter the risk : profoundly affected by the solemnity of of being horrified and terror-stricken | the scene, and by the reminiscences of by the sights that would meet your |allthat rumor had ever watted to her view while pursuing the path that leads | ears’ respecting the deceased Baroness to safety, rather than that the slightest | . ) ' ! -Ermenonda; ‘she died early, and [| suspicion should be engendered in your | have been told that her death was sud- mind respecting the integrity of my | den and mysterious ; motives.’ ‘Hush! repeat not here the suspic- Having thus spoken, and without | ions which float elsewhere,’ interrupted waiting for a reply, the White Lady | the Carmelite. ‘'T'wenty years have traversed the chamber containing the | elapsed since the date assigned to her diabolical machinery; and, pushing | demise; and during that period there open a door, she led the -way through a} has been ample time for calumny to in- passage which terminated in a long suc- | vent strange and wondrous tales, and cession of ‘vaults, supported by low mas- | for scandal torepeatthem. Butif your sive pillars, and the groined archways|sympathy be indeed excited, Angela, of which would have given it the ap-| by the fact that the last lady who bore pearance of a gloomy subterranean pri-| the title of Altendorf went down to the son, had it not been filled with tombs| grave in the spring-tide of her youth and the monuments of the dead. and the glory of her beauty,—and if your ‘Around you, Angela,’ said the White | tender heart be touched by the reflec- comicbooks.com