Page:The Monk, A Romance - Lewis (1796, 1st ed., Volume 1).djvu/103

 a strain the most melancholy and melodious. Rosario raised his head, and listened to her with attention.

"It was thus," said he, with a deep-drawn sigh, "it was thus that, during the last month of her unhappy life, my sister used to sit listening to the nightingale. Poor Matilda! she sleeps in the grave, and her broken heart throbs no more with passion."

"You had a sister?"

"You say right, that I had. Alas! I have one no longer. She sunk beneath the weight of her sorrows in the very spring of life."

"What were those sorrows?"

"They will not excite your pity. You know not the power of those irresistible, those fatal sentiments to which her heart was a prey. Father, she loved unfortunately. A passion for one endowed with every virtue, for a man—oh! rather let me say for a divinity—proved the bane of her existence. His noble form, his spotless character, his various talents, his wisdom solid,