Page:The Monk, A Romance - Lewis (1796, 1st ed., Volume 2).djvu/93

 heaven, furnished with the dagger which had drunk the blood of her paramour, and holding the lamp which had guided her flying steps, every night did she stand before the bed of Otto. The most dreadful confusion reigned through the castle. The vaulted chambers resounded with shrieks and groans; and the spectre, as she ranged along the antique galleries, uttered an incoherent mixture of prayers and blasphemies. Otto was unable to withstand the shock which he felt at this fearful vision: its horrors increased with every succeeding appearance. His alarm at length became so insupportable, that his heart burst, and one morning he was found in his bed totally deprived of warmth and animation. His death did not put an end to the nocturnal riots. The bones of Beatrice continued to lie unburied, and her ghost continued to haunt the castle.

"The domains of Lindenberg now fell to a distant relation. But terrified by the accounts given him of the bleeding nun [so