“Be it so; her window is open, let us enter.”
So they descended, and entered silently into Matilda’s chamber.
The young lady’s eyes were fixed so intently on a little clock, that it was no wonder that she did not perceive the entrance of her two visitors. Her fair cheek rested on her white arm, and her white arm on the cushion of a great chair in which she sat, pleasantly supported by sweet thoughts and swan’s down; a lute was at her side, and a book of prayers lay under the table (for piety is always modest). Like the amorous Alexander, she sighed and looked (at the clock)—and sighed for ten minutes or more, when she softly breathed the word “Edward!”
At this the soul of the Baron was wroth. “The jade is at her old pranks,” said he to the devil; and then addressing Matilda: “I pray thee, sweet niece, turn thy thoughts for a moment from that villanous page, Edward, and give them to thine affectionate uncle.”
When she heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition of her uncle (for a year’s sojourn in purgatory had not increased the comeliness of his appearance), she started, screamed, and of course fainted.
But the devil Mercurius soon restored her to herself. “What’s o’clock?” said she, as soon as she had recovered from her fit: “is he come?”
“Not thy lover, Maude, but thine uncle—that is, his soul. For the love of heaven, listen to me: I have been frying in purgatory for a year past, and should have been in heaven but for the want of a single ave.”
“I will say it for thee to-morrow, uncle.”
“To-night, or never.”
“Well, to-night be it:” and she requested the devil Mercurius to give her the prayer-book from under the table; but he had no sooner touched the holy book than he dropped it with a shriek and a yell. “It was hotter,” he said, “than his master Sir Lucifer’s own particular pitchfork.” And the lady was forced to begin her ave without the aid of her missal.