Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin

. This to me / In dreadful secrecy they did impart, / And I with them the third night kept the watch. / - Shakespeare

As they spoke, a soft knock was heard, such as kindness gives at the door of misfortune, and Everhard started up to answer it. "Stay," said Walberg, absently, "Where are the servants? " Then recollecting himself, he smiled agonizingly, and waved his hand to his son to go. It was the good priest. He entered, and sat down in silence -- no one spoke to him. It might be truly said, as it is sublimely said in the original, "There was neither speech nor language, but voices were heard among them -- and felt too. " The worthy priest piqued himself on his orthodoxy of all matters of belief and form enjoined by the Catholic church; and, moreover, had acquired a kind of monastic apathy, of sanctified stoicism, which priests sometimes imagine is the conquest of grace over the rebellion of nature, when it is merely the result of a profession that denies nature its objects and its ties. Yet so it was, that as he sat among this afflicted family, after complaining of the keenness of the morning air, and wiping away in vain the moisture, which he said it had brought into his eyes, he at last yielded to his feelings, and "lifted up his voice and wept. " But tears were not all he had to offer. On hearing the plans of Walberg and his family, he promised, with a faltering voice, his ready assistance in promoting them; and, as he rose to depart, observing that he had been entrusted by the faithful with a small sum for the relief of the unfortunate, and knew not where it could be better bestowed, he dropped from the sleeve of his habit a well filled purse on the floor, and hurried away.