“Was not that a noise?”--“No, it was the echo of this jarring,
stubborn lock. Is there no one coming?”--“Not one.”--“Look out into the
passage.”--“Then I cannot hold the light to you.”--“No matter--any thing
but detection.”--“Any thing for escape,” I retorted with a courage that
made him start, as I set down the lamp, and joined my strength to his to
turn the key. It grated, resisted; the lock seemed invincible. Again we
tried, with cranched teeth, indrawn breath, and fingers stripped almost
to the bone,--in vain.--Again--in vain.--Whether the natural ferocity of
his temper bore disappointment worse than mine, or that, like many men
of undoubted courage, he was impatient of a _slight_ degree of physical
pain, in a struggle where he would have risked and lost life without a
murmur,--or how it was, I know not,--but he sunk down on the steps
leading to the door, wiped away the big drops of toil and terror from
his forehead with the sleeve of his habit, and cast on me a look that
was at once the pledge of sincerity and of despair. The clock struck
three. The sound rung in my ears like the trumpet of the day of
doom--the trumpet that _will sound_. He clasped his hands with a fierce
and convulsive agony, that might have pictured the last struggles of the
impenitent malefactor,--that agony without remorse, that suffering
without requital or consolation, that, if I may say so, arrays crime in
the dazzling robe of magnanimity, and makes us admire the fallen spirit,
with whom we dare not sympathize. “We are undone,” he cried; “_you_ are
undone. At the hour of three another monk is to enter on his hour of
recollection.” And he added, in a lower tone of horror inexpressible, “I
hear his steps in the passage.” At the moment he uttered these words,
the key, that I had never ceased to struggle with, turned in the lock. The door opened, the passage lay free to us. My companion recovered
himself at the sight, and in the next moment we were both in the
passage. Our first care was to remove the key, and lock the door on the
inside; and during this, we had the satisfaction to discover, that there
was no one in the church, no one approaching it. Our fears had deceived
us; we retired from the door, looked at each other with a kind of
breathless, half-revived confidence, and began our progress through the
vault in silence and in safety. In safety! my God! I yet tremble at the
thought of that subterranean journey, amid the vaults of a convent, with
a parricide for my companion. But what is there that danger will not
familiarize us with? Had I been told such a story of another, I would
have denounced him as the most reckless and desperate being on
earth--yet _I was the man_. I had secured the lamp, (whose light
appeared to reproach me with sacrilege at every gleam it shed on our
progress), and followed my companion in silence. Romances have made your
country, Sir, familiar with tales of subterranean passages, and
supernatural horrors. All these, painted by the most eloquent pen, must
fall short of the breathless horror felt by a being engaged in an
enterprise beyond his powers, experience, or calculation, driven to
trust his life and liberation to hands that reeked with a father’s
blood. It was in vain that I tried _to make up my mind_,--that I said to
myself, “This is to last but for a short time,”--that I struggled to
force on myself the conviction that it was necessary to have such
associates in desperate enterprises;--it was all in vain. I trembled at
my situation,--at myself, and that is a terror we can never overcome. I
stumbled over the stones,--I was chilled with horror at every step. A
blue mist gathered before my eyes,--it furred the edges of the lamp with
a dim and hazy light. My imagination began to operate, and when I heard
the curses with which my companion reproached my involuntary delay, I
began almost to fear that I was following the steps of a demon, who had
lured me there for purposes beyond the reach of imagination to picture. Tales of superstition crowded on me like images of terror on those who
are in the dark. I had heard of infernal beings who deluded monks with
the hopes of liberation, seduced them into the vaults of the convent,
and then proposed conditions which it is almost as horrible to relate as
to undergo the performance of. I thought of being forced to witness the
unnatural revels of a diabolical feast,--of seeing the rotting flesh
distributed,--of drinking the dead corrupted blood,--of hearing the
anthems of fiends howled in insult, on that awful verge where life and
eternity mingle,--of hearing the hallelujahs of the choir, echoed even
through the vaults, where demons were yelling the _black mass_ of their
infernal Sabbath.--I thought of all that the interminable passages, the
livid light, and the diabolical companion, might suggest. “Our wanderings in the passage seemed to be endless. My companion turned
to right, to left,--advanced, retreated, paused,--(the pause was
dreadful)!--Then advanced again, tried another direction, where the
passage was so low that I was obliged to crawl on my hands and knees to
follow him, and even in this posture my head struck against the ragged
roof. When we had proceeded for a considerable time, (at least so it
appeared to me, for minutes are hours in the _noctuary_ of
terror,--terror has no _diary_), this passage became so narrow and so
low, that I could proceed no farther, and wondered how my companion
could have advanced beyond me. I called to him, but received no answer;
and, in the darkness of the passage, or rather hole, it was impossible
to see ten inches before me. I had the lamp, too, to watch, which I had
held with a careful trembling hand, but which began to burn dim in the
condensed and narrow atmosphere. A gush of terror rose in my throat. Surrounded as I was by damps and dews, my whole body felt in a fever. I
called again, but no voice answered. In situations of peril, the
imagination is unhappily fertile, and I could not help recollecting and
_applying_ a story I had once read of some travellers who attempted to
explore the vaults of the Egyptian pyramids. One of them, who was
advancing, as I was, on his hands and knees, stuck in the passage, and,
whether from terror, or from the natural consequences of his situation,
swelled so that it was impossible for him to retreat, advance, or allow
a passage for his companions. The party were on their return, and
finding their passage stopped by this irremoveable obstruction, their
lights trembling on the verge of extinction, and their guide terrified
beyond the power of direction or advice, proposed, in the selfishness to
which the feeling of vital danger reduces all, to cut off the limbs of
the wretched being who obstructed their passage. He heard this proposal,
and, contracting himself with agony at the sound, was reduced, by that
strong muscular spasm, to his usual dimensions, dragged out, and
afforded room for the party to advance.