Page:The Monk, A Romance - Lewis (1796, 1st ed., Volume 2).djvu/189

 people of whom he was then the idol. Conscience painted to him in glaring colours his perjury, and weakness; apprehension magnified to him the horrors of punishment, and he already fancied himself in the prisons of the Inquisition. To these tormenting ideas succeeded Matilda's beauty, and those delicious lessons, which once learnt can never be forgotten. A single glance thrown upon these reconciled him with himself: he considered the pleasures of the former night to have been purchased at an easy price by the sacrifice of innocence and honour. Their very remembrance filled his soul with ecstacy: he cursed his foolish vanity, which had induced him to waste in obscurity the bloom of life, ignorant of the blessings of love and woman: he determined, at all events, to continue his commerce with Matilda, and called every argument to his aid which might confirm his resolution: he asked himself, provided his irregularity was ukknown, in what would his fault consist, and what consequences he had to apprehend?