The Mysteries of Udolpho

The Vaulted Passage

The pair travels through a damp, vapour-filled passage adjoining the castle vaults, where the thick mist makes the torch burn so dimly Barnardine can barely see his way. When he stops to trim the torch while leaning against iron gates opening to the vaults, Emily glimpses heaps of earth surrounding an open grave by the flickering light, and is struck by a terrible presentiment that it is her aunt’s grave, and that Barnardine is leading her to her own death.

The Open Grave

Overcome with the immediate conviction that the open grave is that of her murdered aunt, and that Barnardine has brought her there to kill her as well, Emily briefly considers fleeing. She quickly realizes, however, that the labyrinthine, unfamiliar path she has traveled would allow Barnardine to easily overtake her, and that refusing to go further would only provoke his anger, so she forces herself to suppress her terror and continue following him silently.

The Tower Staircase

After ascending a second flight of steps from the vault passage, Barnardine unlocks a door that leads to the base of a narrow, winding stone staircase running up one of the castle’s towers. He tells Emily her aunt lies in the chamber at the top of the stairs, and as they climb, the wind whistling through narrow cavities in the wall makes the torch flare, illuminating the rough stone walls, ancient iron-armoured figures mounted on the walls, and Barnardine’s grim, cunning face.

The Locked Chamber

At a landing partway up the staircase, Barnardine unlocks a large old chamber door and tells Emily to wait inside while he goes up to notify Madame Montoni of her arrival. Emily is shocked and uneasy at being left alone in the dark, unfamiliar chamber, and asks him not to leave her without light. Barnardine finds a tripod lamp on the stairs, lights it, and gives it to Emily before closing the heavy door behind her.

Voices Below

Left alone in the locked chamber, Emily listens intently for any sound of Madame Montoni from the room above, but hears nothing. She then distinguishes Barnardine’s step descending the stairs, followed by his voice mixing with the wind, and when the wind dies down she hears other deep, unfriendly tones accompanying his, convincing her he is not alone and his companion is unlikely to show her any pity or mercy.

Shadows in the Court

Emily moves to a grated window overlooking the castle court, where she sees the flash of a torch and the huge shadow of a man under the archway, which she assumes is Barnardine. The harsh wind carries his hoarse voice and the voice of his unknown companion, their words lost to the gusts, leaving Emily trapped in the locked chamber with no clear way to escape and her worst fears of betrayal and murder seemingly confirmed.

CHAPITRE I.

Emily, locked in a chamber beneath the castle, discovers instruments of torture, lifts a curtain to find a bloodied corpse she believes is her murdered aunt, falls senseless, is seized by Barnardine’s men and carried outside to waiting horsemen. Montoni’s party rescues her and she is led back to the castle, where Montoni questions her and she is overcome by a deep mental collapse. Annette keeps vigil by her side through the night as Emily weeps, invokes her dead father, and at last sinks into exhausted sleep.

Emily Discovers the Torture Chamber

Emily raises the lamp to examine the spacious, oak-wainscoted chamber and finds no means of escape save the grated window and the door by which she entered. The dim light gradually reveals an iron chair bolted in the centre of the room with an iron ring hanging above it from a chain, and iron bars and rings designed to bind the feet and arms. She concludes the chair is an instrument of torture, imagines some wretched prisoner starved to death within it, and shudders at the thought that her aunt may have been one of its victims and that she herself may be the next. An acute pain seizes her head and, in her weakness, she almost seats herself in the terrible chair before catching herself with a start and fleeing to the far end of the chamber, where her eye is caught by a long dark curtain descending from ceiling to floor.