“The female friends now surrounded the trembling bride, who cast a supplicating and distressed look on the venerable stranger; he did not answer it. The gentlemen assembled in the same manner around the bridegroom. A solemn and anxious silence prevailed among them. ‘That we should be so happy here together,’ began at length the old marquis, who alone seemed not to behold the stranger, or at least seemed to behold him without dismay. ‘That we should be so happy here together, and my son Jeronymo cannot be with us!’
“‘Have you invited him, and has he failed to come?’ asked the monk. It was the first time he had spoken. We looked at him in alarm.
“‘Alas! he is gone to a place from whence there is no return,’ answered the old man. ‘Reverend father I you misunderstood me. My son Jeronymo is dead.’
“‘Perhaps he only fears to appear in this company,’ replied the monk. ‘Who knows how your son Jeronymo may be situated? Let him now hear the voice which he heard the last. Desire your son Lorenzo to call him.’
“‘What means he?’ whispered the company to one another. Lorenzo changed color. I will not deny that my own hair began to stand on end.
“In the meantime the monk approached a sideboard; he took a glass of wine and carried to his lips. ‘To the memory of our dear Jeronymo!’ said he. ‘Let every one who loved the deceased follow my example.’
“‘Be you who you may, reverend father!’ exclaimed the old marquis, ‘you have pronounced a name dear to us all, and you are heartily welcome here;’ then turning to us, he offered us full glasses. ‘Come, my friends!’ continued he, ‘let us not be surpassed by a stranger. The memory of my son Jeronymo!
“Never, I believe, was any toast less heartily received.
“‘There is one glass still unemptied,” said the marquis. ‘Why does my son Lorenzo refuse to drink this friendly toast?’
“Lorenzo, trembling, received the glass from the hands of the monk; tremblingly he put it to his lips. ‘To my dearly-beloved brother Jeronymo!’ he stammered out, and replaced the glass with a shudder.
“‘That was my murderer’s voice!’ exclaimed a terrible figure, which appeared suddenly in the midst of us, covered with blood, and disfigured with horrible wounds.
“Do not ask me the rest,” added the Sicilian, with every symptom of horror in his countenance. “I lost my senses the moment I looked at this apparition. The same happened to every one present. When we recovered the monk and the ghost had disappeared; Lorenzo was writhing in the agonies of death. He was carried to bed in the most dreadful convulsions. No person attended him but his confessor and the sorrowful old marquis, in whose presence he expired. The marquis died a few weeks after him. Lorenzo’s secret is locked in the bosom of the priest who received his last confession; no person ever learnt what it was.