Ippolito roams about in the neighbourhood of Naples, without any definite object in view. His journey, however, soon becomes very painful. It appears that rumour has travelled ahead of him and spread news of his magical pursuits and his supposed alliance with the devil. Everywhere he is received with maledictions and threatened with the Inquisition; and, worst of all, he seems to be followed by the dreaded figure of his persecutor. Once he passes a night in a large, deserted building, where strange voices and footsteps induce him to descend into a subterranean locality of vast dimensions. There he is joined by Schemoli, who reminds him of the uselessness of trying to avoid his fate. He then leaves Ippolito to wander about in darkness, until he discerns two figures advancing before him in the dim light of a lantern. One of them is Schemoli, and the other a monk who carries the lifeless form of a young female. After a while the former is seen to depart, and the monk, with apparent hesitation, prepares to plunge a dagger into the breast of the lady; frightened by Ippolito he releases her and makes his escape. Ippolito seizes the lady and, following the course taken by the monk, emerges at last into the garden of a cloister. In fresh air the lady revives and learns with joy the name of her preserver. She informs him that she has been forcibly separated from his brother Annibal, and implores him to save her. There is a river flowing through the garden; seeing a boat Ippolito springs into it, but before he has time to assist her to follow him, the river is disturbed by an earthquake, and the boat is borne along with great rapidity. After a perilous course Ippolito gets safely ashore, and his ramblings begin again. Yet the suspicions entertained against him are gaining strength every moment, and at last he is imprisoned by the members of the Inquisition. He is repeatedly examined, but nothing worse happens to him so far as the Holy Office is concerned. Schemoli, however, regularly visits him in his cell. Ippolito’s power of resistance has nearly vanished, when he is once more released by another earthquake, which rends asunder the prison-tower of the Inquisition. With the few surviving inhabitants of the town he embarks for Sicily, but the bark is wrecked and Ippolito drifts ashore where he is received by Schemoli. Now he passively yields to the will of his persecutor, who conducts him first to Naples and then to the castle of Muralto.—
Annibal, not finding his brother at Naples, betakes himself to Puzzoli, to seek protection with a relative of his mother, a distinguished ecclesiastic, who lives at enmity with his father. On his way he arrives at a small town by a river which, just then, threatens the inhabitants with an inundation; the nuns of an Ursuline convent are arranging a solemn procession to induce the saint to prevent the impending calamity. In that procession Annibal detects the original of the picture which he still cherishes as his dearest treasure. In ecstasies he rushes to the lady, beginning to address her—to the strong resentment of the nuns—when the flood suddenly comes on with terrible force. Annibal is separated from the object of his rapture, but, in the general confusion at last finds her and succeeds in saving her from the water. She is taken back to the convent, but Annibal contrives clandestinely to meet her. It appears that she is a novice called Ildefonsa, and is forced to take the veil much against her inclinations. Annibal now writes to his relative to request him to interfere on behalf of Ildefonsa. His effort is crowned with success in so far as a letter really arrives from the bishop of the diocese, ordering the removal of Ildefonsa from the convent; but shortly before this Annibal has seen the well-known figure of Schemoli glide past him, and from that moment he is plunged into desperate gloom which nothing is able to dispel. Nor is he mistaken in his forebodings of evil. The messenger bringing the bishop’s letter is sent back with the intelligence that Ildefonsa is dead. Assisted by his faithful Filippo, however, Annibal finds out that this is not the case; accordingly, at the funeral procession, he steps forward accusing the abbess of having arranged a mock funeral, after immuring Ildefonsa in the dungeons of the convent. The abbess allows him to remove the pall, and, to his astonishment, he sees the lifeless form of Ildefonsa. The indignation of the public is now directed against Annibal; he is even imprisoned on account of his extraordinary conduct. Ildefonsa, however, who is not dead but only rendered insensible by a strong opiate, is conveyed to the vaults where Ippolito accidentally saves her from the hands of her enemies. The earthquake which separates Ildefonsa from Ippolito, reunites her with Annibal, whose prison is crushed to pieces. After some time spent in close retirement they venture to set out for Puzzoli. Their guide proves to be bribed by Schemoli, and they are attacked by his attendants, whereupon Annibal is severely wounded. When he comes to his senses he finds himself in the power of his persecutor. By this time he is also a broken man, and bereft of all further power of resistance he consents to all the propositions of Schemoli. He only expresses a wish that there might be another human being in the same condition as himself—and Schemoli has no reason to conceal that there is one: his brother Ippolito. Annibal follows Schemoli to Muralto, where he unexpectedly finds Ildefonsa lying on her death-bed. He has no opportunity, however, to inquire into her fate, for the fatal night draws on apace. That same night the count Montorio is, more than ever, beset by pangs of conscience. He dare not be left alone for a moment, although his wife is quite unable to soothe him. At last he summons the confessor to give him absolution, and now, for the first time, confesses to him that he has tried to palliate his crime by rearing the children of his unhappy brother as his own: Ippolito and Annibal are the sons of his brother Orazio.... The confessor rushes out to the youths, but is powerless to utter one articulate sound. Nor would it be of any avail; in a trance-like condition they enter the count’s apartment, and their swords meet in his body.—
At the moment of the young men’s arrest, Orazio surrenders himself to justice, protesting that he alone is guilty. He asks permission to compose a written account of what has happened, and in this he reveals his identity, relates the story of his early misfortunes, and explains the method adopted by him to carry out his vengeance, which is fatally visited upon himself, his own children becoming murderers at his instigation.—As for Ildefonsa, she is the unacknowledged daughter of Erminia and Verdoni, and the very picture of her mother. Montorio destines her for a convent to get rid of her; when she is brought to the castle by Schemoli’s attendants, we are told that Montorio, ‘on beholding her, felt a long extinguished passion for her mother revive. To gratify a romantic illusion of posthumous passion she was arrayed in fantastic splendour by the count, and to appease fear and jealousy, was poisoned by his wife.’—Ippolito is, in his prison, visited by his former page, who turns out to be a woman called Rosolia di Valozzi. After seeing him once, in the days of his splendour, an irresistible passion had made her quit her convent and enter his service; the diary she used to read to him referred to herself and her attachment to Ippolito. Now her health is undermined, and she expires shortly after her secret is revealed.
Ippolito and Annibal are finally released, but banished from the country for ever. Orazio is condemned to death; but at the last interview with his sons he bursts ‘one of the larger vessels’ and dies, rejoicing that ‘the last of the Montorios has not perished on a scaffold.’
In a short introduction to Montorio it is narrated how two young officers enter the French service at the siege of Barcelona 1697, and distinguish themselves as much by their reckless intrepidity as by their melancholy aloofness from their comrades. When the city is taken both of them perish; and an Italian officer, who is the only person acquainted with their history, relates all that follows.—
It would not be possible to give an account of all the windings of this intricate production, which is said[31] to contain ‘sufficient sparkle and movement for half a dozen ordinary romances.’ An extract from another critic[32] likewise goes to show—besides the fact that Montorio had its admirers—that it is not such a very easy matter to trace even the bare outlines of Maturin’s first story:
In the “House (sic) of Montorio” there is a vast exuberance of all the impulses of humanity,—the young passions, fantasies and aspirations, dancing and eddying like the waters of a gushing fountain, and sparkling in the coloured light of romance. Plot, sentiment, character, and description, in an abundance that seems to mock the anxious effort of ordinary genius, and to perplex the youthful author with his own riches, mark the entire of this extraordinary production.
Yet all these riches, unfortunately, rest on an unsubstantial foundation. The Radcliffe style of composition requires, in fact, the prudence and moderation practised by its originator, in order to preserve anything like an artistic balance. It follows from the very nature of a story of this kind, that the more the scope of action is enlarged, the more unsatisfactory is the inevitable explanation, and the greater the disappointment felt at the implausibility of the solution. In Montorio the disproportion between cause and effect is nothing less than prodigious; and such elements as would actually be grand and imposing in the plan itself, are, in the course of execution, sadly affected by the air of charlatanism inseparable from a plot constructed in the Radcliffe manner. It would be different, and far more satisfactory, if the brothers were, for instance, represented as acting under a kind of hypnotic influence. As it is, the scheme of Orazio is, essentially, carried out by means of talking sheer nonsense to two full-grown people; and facilitated by accidents and singular coincidences which are as incredible as would be the appearance of all the legions of the supernatural world. The wonderful talents of Orazio, above all his capacity of swiftly covering great distances, become almost unnecessary, considering the never-ending maze of secret passages and subterranean recesses at his disposal; there are no two apartments, far or near, unconnected by these means of escape, if need be, and the strangest thing of all is that Orazio, after an absence of twenty years, still is the only person perfectly acquainted with them, wherever they are. For him there is no more difficulty in smuggling letters to Ippolito’s room at Naples, than in suddenly turning up in the prison-cell of the Inquisition. Among other extraordinary circumstances contributing to the success of Orazio’s enterprise, the occurrence of two earthquakes with the same issue, the liberation of a person from his prison by crushing its walls, is the most unfortunate. This repetition of an event which, even if introduced singly, makes unusual claims upon the reader’s credulity, seriously cools his excitement even at the first perusal. As for any recurrent enjoyment, it has very appropriately been pointed out by Scott,[33] that a composer of Radcliffe romances cannot expect his productions to be relished twice or oftener. When everything mysterious and suggestive is carefully explained, there is nothing left to excite curiosity or keep the mind in suspense a second time, as is often the case with powerfully told supernatural incidents which receive no explanation whatever. It is almost intolerable to re-read Montorio, from beginning to end, in spite of the many impressive passages it contains. However, as it is unavoidable in a story constructed in accordance with the principles of Montorio, that the elaborate fabric collapses at the final revelation of the ‘truth’ and the placing side by side of causes and effects, it must still be considered as a success in its kind if this does not happen too soon; and in Montorio the reader is, until the explanation of Orazio, really kept believing that the incidents related are of a preternatural character. Hence the ‘passion of supernatural fear,’ though capable of being inspired only once, is as genuine as that which any Gothic story is likely to create. As far as the purely terrific element is concerned, it has justly been observed[34] that ‘Montorio surpasses all the excellences of Ann Radcliffe and Godwin combined.’ An atmosphere of intense suspense is brought about by the parallel development of two actions, always broken off at the most interesting point, and the vigour, vivacity, and youthful freshness of the style also leaves far behind all that which had been produced, up to 1807, within the Gothic Romance.
Of the two actions the adventures going on at Muralto form the happier one, the tricks of Orazio being, in this instance, far more probable. In the gloomy surroundings where the very air is filled with surmises of some mysterious and horrible secret, it is not unnatural that Orazio should succeed in appealing to the superstitious tendencies of the melancholy-minded Annibal, nor is it astonishing that he is thoroughly acquainted with all the localities of his own castle. The fearful expectations with which Annibal looks forward to his nightly excursions, are cleverly transferred to the reader: