The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 161: what you’re looking at

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

148 Surely it was a giant’s arm that thus handled the coffin as if it were a thing of no weight !— or else, surely some fiend must have lent his power to that wretch whose mischief or whose vengeance, whose malignity or whose avarice, was now about to be gratified by the complete desecration of the fead’s last home ! For at a moment when the moon was shining more brightly than it had hitherto done this night, —when the stillness was more solemn around,— and when the old church stood out in a finer re- lief against the deep inky sky beyond,—at this moment was it that the man tore off the lid of the coffin which he had exhumed. And this portion of his task caused but little trouble: for it was a poor, miserable coffin—a paltry box of thin deal boards hurriedly nailed to- gether and daubed over with a single coat of black paint. For a moment the man seemed disap- pointed, and half inclined to throw beck the coffin into the grave and cover it with the soil again: pat this hesitation vanished almost immediately— and the diabolical instinct which impelled the wreteh, once more became dominant. Away went the lid, then—the shroud was torn the rays of the moon shone out with all their power at that moment upon the counte- nance of the corpse. ‘| But, O God! what a hideous ejaculation burst from the lips of the man as his eyes fell upon the marble features thus exposed to view. Staggering back, he was on the point of falling into the grave beneath the weight of the sudden consternation which had seized upon him: but, with a new and impuise, he sprang forward—he fell upon his knees by the side of the coffin—he steadied himself so as to contemplate the countenance of the corpse with an earnest scrutiny—and thus did he remain, the living looking into the face of the dead, for upwards of a minute. And in the space of that minute what varied thoughts flashed through the brain of the monster- man,—appalling fears lest the suspicion which had struck him should prove correct—wild hopes that imagimation had deceived him,—then a horrible anxiety to receive a confirmation of these hopes, or else to know the worst,—-until at length he could neither hope nor doubt any longer: for the sus- picion was confirmed—the features were those which they had struck him to be—the marble sountenance, so serene in death, was the same which he had loved and caressed in life. Then, with a wild shriek and an unearthly yell, did the wretch spring from his knees: then, with another and still more rending outburst of mor- tal anguish, did he throw up his arms in mingled horror and y--and, as it was precisely at this moment that the moon became all on a sudden obecured with a cloud, the miserable man fancied that the darkness of hell was closing in upon him— and, with a long hideous moan, he sank down on his knees again. His hands were clasped—but his arms hung down like those of the dead. Not a moan—not a sigh now escaped his lips. He was motionless— speechiess. But thoughts of appalling contexture were filling his brain with harrowing sensations, as | THE MYSTERIES. dead another, with the spectra] churchyard as the theatre of the infernal drama! His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth with a deadly thirst: and a mortal terror now seized upon him as the night put forth all its inky blackness to veil both moon and stars and draw its sable curtain down unto the very lowest confines of the horizon. Slowly did a sense of approaching lethargy steal upon him: his form, as he knelt on the humid soil, gave way gradually like an image of snow which is melting at the base;—and he eventually sank down by the side of the coffin, deprived of consciousness and lost to every earthly feeling ! An hour elapsed, during which this swoon lasted—the entranced living slumbering by the side of the irrevocably departed dead! Suddenly the man awoke—and as suddenly he started up. Springing to his feet, he threw wild and horrified looks around. The moon and stars were now shining forth once mo upon the church, the tombs, and the marble countenance of the corpse! Thus was the wretch enabled to discover where he was: and that discovery itself was a mingicd agony and terror. In the space of a single moment—a moment which carried a myriad incidents through his brain as a rocket with all its out-shooting sparks and countless coruscations sweeps through the air, —in that brief space, we say, did he live over again with a frightfally vivid distinctness every incident and every thought of the tremendous sacrilege which he had ere now achieved towards the resting- place of the dead ! Yes—and amidst those horrifying reminiscences which thus swept through his brain, was one which rent him anew with unspeakable agony — which concentrated in itself all the anguish of the rack and the most fiendish implements of the torture- rooms of old—and which made him bend, and writhe, and convulse as if he were flayed alive! Then, as this intolerable anguish at length found means of giving expression to iteelf in words, he sank down once more upon his knees by the side of the coffin, exclaiming—“ My wife! my wife!” And he burst into a flood of the bitterest weeping. Yes: monster-man had thus exhumed,—that wife of whose death he was ignorant—whom he had hoped to meet again in the land of the living—but whom he had thus encountered face to face in the cold damp realm of the dead! Those tears relieved him. The nature which had been changed by awful influences into a demon-like ferocity, was softened: the disposition which ne ordinary causes had converted into a morbid and loathsome brutality, was touched. Over the coffin he threw himself—upon the marble features of the dead he printed his caresses and dropped his tears ; —and the kisses were burning with the memory of ancient love, and the tears were scalding with the anguish and woe of the present moment. And, O cruel contrast !—cold, cold as the grave whence that stiff, stark form had been snatched, was the countenance whereon those kisses were fastened and those tear-drops rained down ;—and the man murmured, as he paused and gazed stead- if scorpions were revelling there. Unnerved and | fastly on the features of the corpse, “Thou dids¢ physically paralysed was he by the fearfulness of | perish through starvation! Yes—it is too apparent the scene in which he was playing one part and the |—for thy cheeks must have been fleshless and (COU it was his wife—his own wife—whom the. DOO (CO