Conrad would have engrossed all my care; and wherever fate shall dispose of me, I shall always cherish his memory, and regard your Highness and the virtuous Hippolita as my parents. In short, Lady, you have missed a husband undeserving of your charms: they shall now be better disposed of. Instead of a sickly boy, you shall have a husband in the prime of his age, who will know how to value your beauties, and who may expect a numerous offspring.
In short, Isabella, since I cannot give you my son, I offer you myself. My father-inlaw! Too long has she cursed me by her unfruitfulness. My fate depends on having sons, and this night I trust will give a new date to my hopes. At those words he seized the cold hand of Isabella, who was half dead with fright and horror. She shrieked, and started from him, Manfred rose to pursue her, when the moon, which was now up, and gleamed in at the opposite casement, presented to his sight the plumes of the fatal helmet, which rose to the height of the windows, waving backwards and forwards in a tempestuous manner, and accompanied with a hollow and rustling sound.
At that instant the portrait of his grandfather, which hung over the bench where they had been sitting, uttered a deep sigh, and heaved its breast. Isabella, whose back was turned to the picture, saw not the motion, nor knew whence the sound came, but started, and said —. Manfred, distracted between the flight of Isabella, who had now reached the stairs, and yet unable to keep his eyes from the picture, which began to move, had, however, advanced some steps after her, still looking backwards on the portrait, when he saw it quit its panel, and descend on the floor with a grave and melancholy air.
Speak, internal spectre! The spectre marched sedately, but dejected, to the end of the gallery, and turned into a chamber on the right hand.
Manfred accompanied him at a little distance, full of anxiety and horror, but resolved. As he would have entered the chamber, the door was clapped to with violence by an invisible hand. The Prince, collecting courage from this delay, would have forcibly burst open the door with his foot, but found that it resisted his utmost efforts. The lady, whose resolution had given way to terror the moment she had quitted Manfred, continued her flight to the bottom of the principal staircase.
There she stopped, not knowing whither to direct her steps, nor how to escape from the impetuosity of the Prince. The gates of the castle, she knew, were locked, and guards placed in the court. Should she, as her heart prompted her, go and prepare Hippolita for the cruel destiny that awaited her, she did not doubt but Manfred would seek her there, and that his violence would incite him to double the injury he meditated, without leaving room for them to avoid the impetuosity of his passions.
Delay might give him time to reflect on the horrid measures he had conceived, or produce some circumstance in her favour, if she could—for that night, at least—avoid his odious purpose. Yet where conceal herself? How avoid the pursuit he would infallibly make throughout the castle? As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, she recollected a subterraneous passage which led from the vaults of the castle to the church of St.
In this resolution, she seized a lamp that burned at the foot of the staircase, and hurried towards the secret passage. The lower part of the castle was hollowed into several intricate cloisters; and it was not easy for one under so much anxiety to find the door that opened into the cavern.
An awful silence reigned throughout those subterraneous regions, except now and then some blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed, and which, grating on the rusty hinges, were re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness.
Every murmur struck her with new terror; yet more she dreaded to hear the wrathful voice of Manfred urging his domestics to pursue her. She trod as softly as impatience would give her leave, yet frequently stopped and listened to hear if she was followed.
In one of those moments she thought she heard a sigh. She shuddered, and recoiled a few paces. In a moment she thought she heard the step of some person. Her blood curdled; she concluded it was Manfred. Every suggestion that horror could inspire rushed into her mind. She condemned her rash flight, which had thus exposed her to his rage in a place where her cries were not likely to draw anybody to her assistance.
Yet the sound seemed not to come from behind. If Manfred knew where she was, he must have followed her. She was still in one of the cloisters, and the steps she had heard were too distinct to proceed from the way she had come.
Cheered with this reflection, and hoping to find a friend in whoever was not the Prince, she was going to advance, when a door that stood ajar, at some distance to the left, was opened gently: but ere her lamp, which she held up, could discover who opened it, the person retreated precipitately on seeing the light.
Isabella, whom every incident was sufficient to dismay, hesitated whether she should proceed. Her dread of Manfred soon outweighed every other terror.
The very circumstance of the person avoiding her gave her a sort of courage. It could only be, she thought, some domestic belonging to the castle. Fortifying herself with these reflections, and believing by what she could observe that she was near the mouth of the subterraneous cavern, she approached the door that had been opened; but a sudden gust of wind that met her at the door extinguished her lamp, and left her in total darkness.
Alone in so dismal a place, her mind imprinted with all the terrible events of the day, hopeless of escaping, expecting every moment the arrival of Manfred, and far from tranquil on knowing she was within reach of somebody, she knew not whom, who for some cause seemed concealed thereabouts; all these thoughts crowded on her distracted mind, and she was ready to sink under her apprehensions.
She addressed herself to every saint in heaven, and inwardly implored their assistance. For a considerable time she remained in an agony of despair. It appears your browser does not have it turned on. Please see your browser settings for this feature.
EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Publication date Topics librivox , audiobooks , horror , Gothic , passion , antiquity. If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed. Loved each and every part of this book.
I will definitely recommend this book to classics, gothic lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. The Latin text seems less to have been imitated than shockingly misused. Middleton, an Anglican clergyman, had in published a short work in English denouncing Catholicism for its similarity to ancient Roman religious ritual. Amid the chaotic over- crowding of objects, each item in itself seems radically isolated, denuded of any context. At other times, Walpole makes the juxtapositions explicit.
Other objects in the collection suggest that Walpole was fascinated by the gro- tesque and hybrid elements already evident in classical culture. Walpole describes at unusual length the other, Dionysiac motifs: a tripod, birds, and satyrs. Walpole also seems to exhibit a morbid fascination with charismatic villainy. Haggerty has rightly drawn attention to the homoeroticism of this letter, especially since the bust was a token of his friend- ship with Mann.
The line itself is, if not a mixture, then at least a rearrangement. In the Dunciad 1. Here too Walpole is rearranging the past. But he has little interest in truly harmonizing the opposition between the Gothic and the classical, since the shock of his aesthetic depends precisely on sustaining a sense of the rhetorical dichotomy between the two.
The Castle of Otranto creates its own antiquity, as scholars have long recognized. The Greek or Roman past may no longer be a direct model for aesthetic ideals in the present. I will treasure it. Horace Walpole ; repr. Farnborough, Gregg Inter- national Publishers, , p.
All subsequent quotations are taken from this edition. Page numbers will follow in brackets. Walpole bought the bust himself at an auction in Rome in , from the collection of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni: W. Lewis ed. Its position with the eagle: Correspondence Walpole certainly believed that his bust was genuinely ancient, though the black stone could well suggest a Renaissance origin: I.
Clery Oxford, Oxford University Press, , p.
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