The Monk: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Raymond’s journey to Bavaria is mostly uneventful. The baron is kind but simple and unworldly. He takes to Raymond, though, and the two become friends. It’s at the castle of Lindenberg where Raymond first meets Agnes, and he is immediately struck by her beauty, intelligence, and talent at music and drawing. The baroness tells Raymond that Agnes is her niece and has been “destined to the convent from her cradle.” The baroness explains that Agnes’s mother became seriously ill while pregnant with Agnes and vowed that, should her unborn survive, she would promise them to serve at a convent or monastery, depending on the child’s sex.

Upon her healthy birth (and her mother’s recovery), Agnes is sent away to live at a convent in Germany and trained for her adult life as a nun. Agnes resents the future that has been laid out for her and mostly plays pranks on the nuns and mocks their religious ceremonies. Meanwhile, knowing that Lorenzo would disapprove of Agnes’s fate, his parents kept her future a secret from him.  

Raymond continues his story. He immediately resolves to rescue Agnes from her future as a nun and suggests they elope. Agnes, however, insists that Raymond ask for the baron and baroness’s blessing. Raymond sets to work ingratiating himself with the baroness. When at last he decides to confess his love to Agnes to the baroness, she cuts him off, admitting that she already knows—but she mistakenly believes that Raymond has fallen in love with her, not Agnes. She effusively tells Raymond that the feelings are mutual. Raymond, flustered, finally admits that he is in love with another woman, not the baroness. Hearing this, the baroness erupts with rage and then faints. Raymond takes this opportunity to flee.

Raymond runs into Agnes sitting in a parlor and working on a drawing. She invites him to sit with her, and he agrees.  Raymond is shocked when he sees that Agnes is drawing a nun covered in blood. Agnes calmly explains that “the bleeding nun” is a famous legend that her family has believed in for many generations. She proceeds to tell Raymond the nun’s backstory. 

According to Agnes, the bleeding nun is an apparition who roams the hallways of the castle of Lindenberg at night, knocking over furniture and making frightening howling sounds. Things become so bad that people refuse to live at the castle. But the next baron who moves in brings in an exorcist to cleanse the castle. Things settle down for five years, but then the exorcist dies, and the nun returns—though now she only haunts the castle on the fifth day of the fifth month once every five years. On that day, the room to her bedchamber of choice opens, and she roams the castle freely.

When Raymond asks whether Agnes believes in the bleeding nun, Agnes says she’s too sensible to believe in such superstition. At this point, Agnes rises and retrieves a self-portrait from a drawer. She gifts it to Raymond, who is touched. Not long after this, though, the baroness recovers and, having discovered the true object of Raymond’s affections, angrily informs him that he is to leave the castle the following day. She’ll also return Agnes to her parents, who will turn her over to the convent, where she will spend the rest of her life.

Just as Raymond is leaving Strasbourg, Theodore intercepts him to covertly deliver a letter from Agnes, in which she instructs Raymond to hide out in a nearby village. She’ll find him, and they can elope from there. Raymond travels to Munich, where he shelters at a small inn. Later, he encounters Agnes and her servants, who have stopped there on the way to one of Agnes’s routine visits to the convent of St. Catharine. They discreetly acknowledge each other and arrange to meet in secret one night back at the castle of Lindenberg. Finally, the night arrives, and Raymond and Agnes convene in the castle’s gardens. There, Agnes informs Raymond that she can’t stay for long: her servant Cunegonda watches her so closely that she is practically a prisoner. Agnes does have a plan to escape, though.

Agnes tells Raymond her plan. It’s now April 30—meaning the bleeding nun’s arrival is imminent. Agnes plans to disguise herself as the nun on that night, and her frightening appearance will allow her to escape the castle without anybody stopping her. Just then, though, Cunegonda appears behind the couple, having heard Agnes sneak out of her bedchamber. Cunegonda also overheard the couple’s entire conversation. She scolds Agnes for her impiety and promises to tell the baron and baroness everything. Raymond has no other choice but to take Cunegonda captive. He orders Agnes to return to her chamber, then he subdues Cunegonda and travels with her on horseback back to his lodgings in Munich.

Raymond keeps Cunegonda at the inn over the next five days. Theodore delights in tormenting the old woman, and everyone back at the castle, save Agnes, have no idea what has happened to the old woman. On the fifth of May, Raymond travels to the castle of Lindenberg and waits at the spot he and Agnes have agreed upon. He spots Agnes at the gates, dressed to resemble the bleeding nun, and draws her into a deep embrace. “I am thine!” he cries out to her. Agnes, though, is too shocked to speak, so Raymond hoists her into the carriage, and they begin the journey back to the inn. Before they can get there, though, the carriage is involved in a horrible crash, and Raymond loses consciousness.

When Raymond comes to, he asks the peasants who apparently rescued him about Agnes. The peasants, puzzled, inform Raymond that was traveling alone. Days pass, yet still Raymond hears no news of Agnes. One night, Raymond is alone in his sleeping quarters when the door blows open to reveal the bleeding nun herself. Raymond looks upon his spectral visitor with horror as she repeats back to him the words he’d uttered nights before: “Thou art mine!” Then she sits down at the edge of his bed and watches him silently for a while before exiting the way she came. This same ritual repeats every night and goes on for several months, all while Raymond remains bedridden. 

Theodore eventually learns where Raymond has been staying and visits him to explain what happened the night of the thwarted scheme. According to Theodore, Agnes was waiting for Raymond at the designated spot and was shocked and dismayed when he never arrived to rescue her. Theodore watched as Raymond’s carriage departed for the village with the false Agnes. Back at the castle, Cunegonda revealed Agnes’s plan, and everyone agreed that it was the real bleeding nun who had left with Raymond. With no other choice, and having been convinced by her aunt that Raymond abandoned her and was only ever interested in her for her wealth, Agnes agreed to leave for the convent.

Sometime later, Theodore remarks to Raymond about a strange visitor who has arrived in Munich. The stranger calls himself “the Grand Mogul.” The other day, the stranger gave an odd speech in which he claimed to have a message for Raymond. Intrigued, Raymond agrees to see the stranger. When they meet, Raymond observes that the man has dark, “sparkling” eyes. He is dressed simply and has a “melancholy” demeanor. The stranger tells Raymond that he knows about his secret and that the bleeding nun won’t visit him again after this coming Saturday. The stranger promises to return then. With that, he leaves.

Finally, Saturday night arrives. The stranger comes to Raymond’s room, carrying a small chest, from which he removes a goblet full of blood, a crucifix, various bones, and a Bible. He makes a circle on the floor with blood from the goblet and beckons Raymond to step inside it. Then the stranger calls the name Beatrice three times, and the nun—Beatrice—appears. The stranger threatens Beatrice with the crucifix and demands that she explain what has disturbed her slumber. Beatrice explains that her bones are rotting unburied in Lindenberg Hole and that only Raymond can lay them to rest—it turns out that Beatrice is the great aunt of Raymond’s grandfather.

The stranger explains Beatrice’s scandalous and tragic past. Her parents forced her to become a nun when she was young, but she hated it and didn’t take her responsibilities seriously. She declared herself an atheist and preferred to act out of her personal desires instead of honoring her vows. Eventually she fled the convent to elope with the baron Lindenberg. They settled at the castle of Lindenberg. Not long afterward, she caught sight of the baron’s younger brother, Otto, and began to desire him. Beatrice and Otto schemed for Beatrice to kill the baron so they could be together. Beatrice murdered the baron and then met Otto at the Lindenberg Hole, where they’d arranged to meet, but Otto turned on Beatrice, stabbing her to death. Afterward, Otto became baron of Lindenberg; nobody suspected his role in his brother’s murder.

Beatrice began to haunt Otto, standing before his bed each night holding the dagger that killed his brother. Meanwhile, her bones remained in the Lindenberg Hole. Otto died of fright, and the castle moved into the hands of distant relatives. Eventually the exorcist was called in, and he convinced Beatrice to limit her hauntings to once every five years. Now, it’s up to Raymond to end her haunting by finally laying her bones to rest. Before the stranger can leave, Raymond demands that he answer one puzzling implied detail in his story: that he was personally acquainted with the exorcist, who would have lived 100 years ago. The stranger doesn’t offer any satisfying answers, though, and leaves before Raymond can inquire further. (In the present, Lorenzo asks Raymond about the stranger, and Raymond offers his theory that the stranger may be the mythical figure of the “wandering Jew.”)

Raymond continues his story. He locates the bleeding nun’s remains inside the Lindenberg Hole and, upon burying them, her apparition no longer haunts him. Raymond learns that Agnes has since taken her holy vows, and so he heads to Madrid in the hopes that he can persuade her to leave the convent. Returning to his hotel one night, he’s accosted by some assassins. A band of cavaliers intervene, saving Raymond’s life. One of the men turns out to be Agnes’s father—though the man doesn’t know Raymond’s relationship to Agnes, as her family only knew him as Alphonso. Agnes’s father, Don Gaston de Medina, confirms that Agnes is at St. Clare convent.

The next day, Raymond heads to St. Clare. Theodore accompanies him and attacks the convent’s gardener. Raymond takes over the gardener’s job. One day, he spots the prioress speaking sternly with Agnes about the sin of pining over the loss of an unfaithful lover. After the prioress leaves, Raymond approaches Agnes, but she flees when she recognizes him. He later gets her to agree to meet with him, though, and after he tells her his story, she accepts it and forgives him. But she says it’s too late for them to be together, as she has already taken her holy vows. Raymond, in turn, promises to get his relative—the cardinal-duke of Lerma—to excuse her of her holy duties. 

Agnes and Raymond continue to meet in secret for several weeks, though Agnes initially resists the possibility of abandoning her holy vows. Eventually their mutual passion is too much to suppress, and they have sex during one of their clandestine meetings. Afterward, Agnes recoils and scolds Raymond for his wickedness. She orders him never to see her again. And later, after word spreads of Raymond’s illicit activities with Agnes, he is let go as the convent’s gardener.

A few months later, Raymond receives a letter from Agnes informing him that she is pregnant. She pleads for him to return and rescue her and their child from the wrath of her superiors. Upon receiving the letter, Raymond returns to St. Clare, kidnaps the current gardener and locks him in his hotel, and switches places with him. And that, Raymond explains to Lorenzo in the present, is how the events Lorenzo witnessed earlier that day came to be.