The Hermit's Apparition and Warning to Frederic

The Hermit's Apparition and Warning to Frederic is the supernatural intervention that checks Frederic’s growing desire for Matilda and recalls him to the divine command associated with a buried sabre. Arriving at Hippolita’s oratory while seeking to encourage her consent to divorce, Frederic instead meets a spectre who recognizes their earlier encounter in the wood of Joppa and gives him a stark instruction: forget Matilda. The apparition vanishes, but its command leaves Frederic caught between penitence and passion.

Background and Circumstances

At the evening banquet, Frederic had watched Matilda with increasing passion. He understood that Manfred had made possession of Isabella an unalterable condition of granting Matilda to him, and hoped to find Hippolita in the disposition Manfred had promised. The portents that had alarmed him earlier were, in that moment, forgotten in his desire. After the feast, he went quietly to Hippolita’s apartment, intending to encourage her acquiescence to the divorce.

Frederic assumed Hippolita would be in her oratory because an attendant told him she generally withdrew there at that hour. He found her apartment silent and the oratory door ajar. The gloomy, overcast evening frames his passage into the devotional space: his effort to advance a worldly marriage arrangement leads instead to a warning about spiritual obligations and Matilda.

The Apparition and Its Recognition

A person kneeling before the altar initially appeared to Frederic to be a religious figure, dressed in a long woollen garment and absorbed in prayer. He approached, then prepared to withdraw, intending to excuse his interruption. When he addressed the figure as a reverend father and said he sought Hippolita, it answered with a hollow voice, questioning whether he had come to the castle to seek her. Turning slowly, the figure revealed a skeleton beneath a hermit’s cowl.

Frederic recoiled and called for the protection of the angels. The spectre answered that he should deserve that protection, and Frederic fell to his knees to beg for pity. Rather than leave its identity unexplained, the apparition asked whether he remembered it and named the wood of Joppa. Frederic recognized it as the holy hermit he had encountered there and asked whether he could do anything for its eternal peace. The exchange makes their previous meeting the key to understanding this visitation: the spectre is not an unknown warning voice but a figure from Frederic’s earlier experience.

The Command and Frederic’s Response

The hermit recalled that Frederic had been delivered from bondage and challenged him for pursuing carnal delights. It also invoked the buried sabre and the behest of Heaven engraved upon it. Frederic answered that he had not forgotten, and asked what remained to be done. The apparition’s entire errand was expressed as a direct order: “To forget Matilda!” It then vanished.

The command joins the present encounter to the sabre’s earlier message without restating the full prophecy. Frederic’s desire for Matilda is thus set against a divine instruction he acknowledges, but has not allowed to govern his immediate plans. His reply admits that he remembers the warning; his visit to Hippolita shows that remembrance alone has not quieted his passion. The spectre makes the conflict explicit and gives it a concrete consequence: Frederic is told to abandon the woman he has just been seeking to marry.

Aftermath and Significance

After the apparition disappeared, Frederic remained motionless for several minutes. He then prostrated himself before the altar and sought the intercession of the saints, followed by tears and an inward struggle between penitence and his continuing thoughts of Matilda. The scene does not show his desire simply extinguished: the image of Matilda returns even as he seeks pardon. Its force lies in that unresolved opposition between religious submission and personal passion.

Hippolita entered the oratory alone with a taper and found Frederic motionless on the floor, apparently dead. Her fright brought him back to himself. He rose with tears on his face and tried to rush away, but Hippolita stopped him and pleaded for an explanation, asking whether his distress concerned her child. The supernatural warning therefore leads directly into a human encounter: Frederic’s shaken state alarms Hippolita, while the immediate question of Matilda’s fate remains unanswered in the scene. The apparition interrupts the negotiation over divorce and marriage, turning Frederic’s desire into a test of whether he will obey the command he says he has not forgotten.