I could not make any articulate answer to this address. I knelt before him in abject misery, and even kissed the hem of his garment. Deep-drawn sighs, which I could not repress, betrayed the frightful condition of my soul. The monks again lifted me up, and brought me into the refectorium, where they insisted on my accepting of some refreshments.
On a sign from the Prior, the brethren then retired, and I remained with him alone.
"Brother," he began, "your conscience seems to be loaded with some heavy sins; for nothing but repentance almost without hope, on account of some extraordinary crime, could have given rise to such conduct as you have this evening exhibited. Yet great and boundless are the mercy and long-suffering of God; very powerful, too, is the intercession of the saints. Therefore, take courage! You shall confess to me; and when this duty is fulfilled, the consolations of the church shall not be wanting."
These words in themselves were not remarkable; but the tone and manner of the Prior made on me such an impression, that at this moment methought the mysterious pilgrim of the Holy Lime-Tree stood beside me, and as if he were the only being on the wide earth to whom I was bound to disclose the horrors of my life, and from whom I must allow nothing to remain concealed. Still I was unable to speak. I could only prostrate myself again upon the earth before the old man.
"I am now obliged," said he, "to return to the chapel. Should you resolve to follow my counsel, you will find me there."
My determination was already fixed. As soon as I had, by a great effort, recovered some degree of composure, I hastened after the Prior, and found him waiting in the confessional. Acting according to the impulse of the moment, I began to speak, for the first time since a very long period, without the slightest attempt at disguise. On the contrary, I confessed all the adventures of my life, from first to last, without mitigating a single circumstance, which the severest censor could have suggested against me!
Horrible was the penance which the Prior now imposed upon me! Forbid to appear again in the church—shut out like an alien from the society of the monks, I was henceforth confined to the charnel vaults of the convent—miserably prolonging my life by a stinted portion of tasteless roots and water, scourging myself with knotted ropes, and mangling my flesh with various implements of martyrdom, which the ingenuity of demoniacal malevolence had first invented, lifting up my voice only in bitter accusations against myself, or in the most passionate and abject supplications for deliverance from that hell whose flames already seemed to burn within me!
But when my blood streamed from an hundred wounds—when pain, in a hundred scorpion stings, assailed me—and nature yielded at last, from inability to continue the conflict, so that I fell asleep like an exhausted child, even in despite of my torments—then the horrid imagery of dreams molested me with a new and involuntary martyrdom.
Methought I saw Euphemia, who came floating towards me in all the luxuriance of her beauty, and casting on me the most seductive glances. But I cried out aloud, "What would'st thou from me, thou accursed sinful woman? No! hell shall not triumph over the truly penitent!" Then methought her form, before so wanton and luxurious, shook and shivered. She threw aside her robes, and a horror, like that of annihilation, seized upon me; for I saw that her body was dried up into a skeleton, and through the ribs of the spectre I saw not worms, but numberless serpents that twined and twisted within and without, thrusting out their heads and forked burning tongues towards me.
"Away!—begone!" cried I, in delirium; "thy serpents are stinging my already wounded flesh. They would fatten on my heart's-blood,—but then—I should die—I should die—Death would release me from thy vengeance!"