I heard
her murmur the irrevocable vow. I saw her extended on a bier: the
death-pall spread over her, the funeral service performed that
proclaimed her dead to the world; her sighs were drowned in the deep
tones of the organ, and the plaintive requiem of the nuns; the
father looked on, unmoved, without a tear; the lover- no- my
imagination refused to portray the anguish of the lover- there the
picture remained a blank.
After a time the throng again poured forth, and dispersed various
ways, to enjoy the light of the sun and mingle with the stirring
scenes of life; but the victim, with her bridal chaplet, was no longer
there. The door of the convent closed that severed her from the
world for ever. I saw the father and the lover issue forth; they
were in earnest conversation. The latter was vehement in his
gesticulations; I expected some violent termination to my drama; but
an angle of a building interfered and closed the scene. My eye
afterwards was frequently turned to that convent with painful
interest. I remarked late at night a solitary light twinkling from a
remote lattice of one of its towers. "There," said I, "the unhappy nun
sits weeping in her cell, while perhaps her lover paces the street
below in unavailing anguish."
The officious Mateo interrupted my meditations and destroyed in an
instant the cobweb tissue of my fancy. With his usual zeal he had
gathered facts concerning the scene, which put my fictions all to
flight.
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