I made a violent effort to be tranquil, looked up again, and saw Aurelia kneeling at the high altar. Oh, heavens! her beauty of countenance, and symmetry of form, were more than ever dazzling and seductive! She was dressed, too, as a bride, precisely as she had been on that fatal day of our intended marriage, with wreaths of myrtle and roses twisted in her luxuriant and skilfully-plaited hair. The devotion--the solemnity and agitation of the moment, had heightened the bloom on her cheeks; and in her eyes, uplifted to heaven, lay an expression of desire, which, in another place, or on another occasion, might have been very differently interpreted. What were those moments, after I had recognized Aurelia at the _residenz_ of the Prince von Rosenthurm, compared to this? I said that my feelings then were indescribable, but my passions now raged and burned within me with a violence which I had never before known. Every vein and fibre in my frame was convulsed and swollen by the vehemence of my conflict, and I grasped the reading-desk with such force, that the boards cracked and broke beneath the pressure. Meanwhile, I prayed internally with great fervour--"Oh, merciful Heaven--Oh, ye blessed saints, intercede for me!--Let me not become mad!--only not mad!--Save me--save me from this hellish torment!--Save me from utter frenzy, otherwise I must commit the most horrible of crimes, and give up my soul to everlasting destruction!" Such were my inward aspirations, for I felt how every moment the evil spirit was acquiring more and more an ascendancy over me. It seemed to me as if Aurelia, too, had a share in the crime which I alone was committing, as if the vow that she was about to take was _not_ to be the bride of Heaven, but to become _mine_! To rush up to the altar, to press her in my arms in one last delicious embrace, and then stab her to the heart--this impulse became almost irresistible. The demon raged more and more wildly in my heart--I was about to scream out, "Stop there, deluded fools!--Not a virgin, as you believe, pure and emancipated from earthly bonds and passion, but the devoted bride of the perjured monk, would you consecrate to Heaven!" * * * * When I heard Aurelia's voice, however, as she began to pronounce the vow, then it seemed as if a mild gleam of moonlight broke through the dark and stormy clouds by which my reason had been obscured. By this pure light I detected all the artifices of my relentless adversary, whom I was thus, with tenfold vigour, enabled to resist. Every word uttered by Aurelia, like the encouraging voice of a guardian seraph, gave me new strength, and, after an arduous conflict, I was left victor. That black and hideous impulse to new crimes was put to flight, and with it every remains of sinful passion. Aurelia was again the pious votary of Heaven, whose prayer could rescue me from eternal remorse and destruction. Her vows were to me the source of consolation and of hope; I could look again without