eived,
concerning the spectacle, that formerly occasioned her so much terror,
and had since compelled her, for a while, to attribute the horrors of
the nun to a consciousness of a murder, committed in that castle.

It may be remembered, that, in a chamber of Udolpho, hung a black
veil, whose singular situation had excited Emily's curiosity, and which
afterwards disclosed an object, that had overwhelmed her with horror;
for, on lifting it, there appeared, instead of the picture she had
expected, within a recess of the wall, a human figure of ghastly
paleness, stretched at its length, and dressed in the habiliments of
the grave. What added to the horror of the spectacle, was, that the face
appeared partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which were visible on
the features and hands. On such an object, it will be readily believed,
that no person could endure to look twice. Emily, it may be recollected,
had, after the first glance, let the veil drop, and her terror had
prevented her from ever after provoking a renewal of such suffering, as
she had then experienced. Had she dared to look again, her delusion and
her fears would have vanished together, and she would have perceived,
that the figure before her was not human, but formed of wax. The history
of it is somewhat extraordinary, though not without example in the
records of that fierce severity, which monkish superstition has
sometimes inflicted on mankind. A member of the house of Udolpho, having
committed some offence against the prerogative of the church, had been
condemned to the penance of contemplating, during certain hours of the
day, a waxen image, made to resemble a human body in the state, to which
it is reduced after death. This penance, serving as a memento of the
condition at which he must himself arrive, had been designed to
reprove the pride of the Marquis of Udolpho, which had formerly so
much exasperated that of the Romish church; and he had not only
superstitiously observed this penance himself, which, he had believed,
was to obtain a pardon for all his sins, but had made it a condition
in his will, that his descendants should preserve the image, on pain of
forfeiting to the church a certain part of his domain, that they
also might profit by the humiliating moral it conveyed. The figure,
therefore, had been suffered to retain its station in the wall of the
chamber, but his descendants excused themselves from observing the
penance, to which he had been e