brother plots to murder Orazio himself, who, however, discovers the innocence of his wife and the hideous perfidy of his brother.  Temporarily bereft of reason, Orazio sojourns alone on a desert island.  When his senses are restored, he resolves to devote the rest of his life to vengeance.  For fifteen years he buries himself in occult studies, and when his diabolical schemes have matured, returns, disguised as the monk Schemoli, to the scene of the murder.  He becomes confessor to his brother, who has assumed the title and estates.  It is his intention to compel the Count’s sons, Annibal and Ippolito, to murder their father.  Death at the hands of parricides seems to him the only appropriate catastrophe for the Count’s career of infamy.  To reconcile the two victims—­Annibal and Ippolito—­to their task, he “relies mainly on the doctrine of fatalism.”  The most complex and ingenious “machinery” is used to work upon their superstitious feelings.  No device is too tortuous if it aid his purpose.  Even the pressure of the Inquisition is brought to bear on one of the brothers.  Each, after protracted agony, submits to his destiny, and the swords of the two brothers meet in the Count’s body.  When the murder is safely accomplished, it is proved that Annibal and Ippolito are the sons, not of the Count, but of Schemoli and Erminia.  By the irony of fate the knowledge comes too late for Schemoli to save his children from the crime.  At the close of a lengthy trial the two brothers are released, but deprived of their lands.  Ultimately they die fighting in the siege of Barcelona.  Schemoli perishes, in the approved Gothic manner, by self-administered poison.  Intertwined with the main theme of Schemoli’s fatal revenge are the love-stories of the two brothers.  Rosolia, a nun, who seems to have been acquainted with Shakespeare’s comedies, disguises herself as a page, and devotes her life to the service of Ippolito and to the composition of sentimental verses.  She only reveals her sex just before her death, though we have guessed it from her first appearance.  Ildefonsa, who is beloved of Annibal, has been forced into a convent against her will—­a fate almost inevitable in the realm of Gothic romance.  When letters are received authorising her release from the vows, a pitiless mother-superior reports that she is dead.  She is immured, but an earthquake sets her free, for Maturin will move heaven and earth to effect his purposes.  The ill-fated maiden dies shortly afterwards.  Ere the close it proves that Ildefonsa was the daughter of Erminia, who had been secretly married to Verdoni before her union with Orazio.  Such is the skeleton of Maturin’s story, when its scattered members have been patiently collected and fitted together.  The impressive figure of Schemoli, with his unholy power of fascinating his reluctant accomplices, lends to the book the only sort of unity it possesses.  But even he fails to arouse a sense of fear strong enough to fix our attention to so wandering a story.  Like the doomed brothers, we drift dejectedly through inexplicable terrors, and we re-echo with fervour Annibal’s dolorous cry: