13
incoherent word, sink down again, to pass through
the same fierce vicissitudes of delirious sleep.
The morning of the fourth day dawned upon
Vivenzio. But it was high noon before his mind
shook off its stuper, or he awoke to a full consciousness
of his situation. And what a fixed energy
of despair sat upon his pale features, as he cast his
eyes upwards, and gazed upon the THREE windows
that now alone remained 1 The three !—there
were no more!—and they seemed to number his
own alloted days. Slowly and calmly he next surveyed
the top and sides, and comprehended all the
meaning of the diminished height of the former, as
well as of the gradual approximination of the latter.
The contracted dimensions of his mysterious
prison were now too gross and palpable to be the
juggle of his imagination. Still lost in wonder at
the means, Vivenzio could put no cheat upon his
reason, as to the end. By what horrible ingenuity
it was contrived, that walls, and roof, and windows
should thus silently and imperceptibly, without
noise, and without motion almost, fold, as it were,
within each other, he knew not. He only knew
they did so ; and he vainly strove to persuade himself
it was the intention of the contriver, to rack
the miserable wretch who might be immured there,
with anticipation, merely, of a fate, from which
in the very crisis of his agony, he was to be reprieved.
Gladly would he have clung even to this possibility,
if his heart would have let him ; but he
felt a dreadful assurance of its fallacy. And what
matchless inhumanity it was to doom the sufferer
to such lingering torments—to lead him day by
day to so appalling a death, unsupported by the
consolations of religion, unvisited by any human
