A cloud passed over the thoughts of Charles. From the momentous evening
she received the rebuke of her father, her heart became the battle-field
of contending emotions. She brooded in silence over imaginary wrongs,
and thus gave to a latent passion the first impulse that led to
disastrous consequences. Diseased fancy lent a charm to thoughts long
forgotten, and recalled the pictures of pride and ambition that had
so often gilded the horizon of her young hopes. To be free and have
wealth, she thought, was worth swimming across a river of blood to
gain.
A temptation seized the thoughts of Charles. It clung to her like
the bloodsucker drawing fresh streams from young veins. Notwithstanding
her efforts to shake off the terrible temptation, and because she did
not seek aid in the sacraments of the Church, it lived and haunted
her in spite of her will. We tremble to write it--'twas to murder her
father.
Chapter XV.
Tragedy in the Mountains.
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, "Hold!, hold!"
--Macbeth.
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