That well-known form of her whom I so deeply revered, was again presented, as if living, before me. Methought, too, I heard her voice.--"Medardus," said she, "hast thou been good and pious?" The well-known tones, deepened by anxiety and love, floated like soft music around me. "Hast thou been good and pious?" Alas! what must now be my answer? The beautiful picture, traced by the pencil of Innocence and Hope, is clouded and defaced for ever--the vernal skies are darkened--the cold tempest winds of grief and remorse desolate the landscape. I have heaped up crime on crime. On the first breach of my monastic vows followed murder; and _now_, is not my daily life of dissipation and deceit, but the certain commencement of crimes yet to come? These thoughts, and many more, that it would require a volume to delineate, rushed at once upon me, so that, completely overpowered, I sunk, half-fainting, into a chair, and burst into tears. The old man was terrified. "For God's sake, sir," said he, "what's the matter? what has happened to you?" "That picture," said I, in a hollow suppressed voice, "resembles with such accuracy a near relation whom I lost by a cruel and untimely death, that it has deeply affected me." With these words I arose, and assumed as much composure as possible. "Come, sir," said this man, "such recollections are far too painful, and should be avoided. There is yet one portrait here, which my master considers his best, and which you have not seen. It is painted after the life, and has only just now been finished. We have hung a curtain before it, that the sun might not injure the fresh colours." The old man placed me carefully in the proper light, and then drew up the curtain--IT WAS AURELIA! CHAPTER XIX. At first, a kind of horror seized upon me; for I knew not if this could be reality, or the mockery of that relentless Fiend, that would lure me on to destruction. But, with a violent effort, I summoned up courage; an entire revolution again took place in my mind; new hopes and feelings began to break through the gloom and melancholy, which for a space had gathered around me.