4
folding doors beneath them, which occupied the
centre, no chink, or chasm, projection, broke the
smooth black surface of the walls. An iron bedstead,
littered with straw, stood in one corner ; and
beside it, a vessel with water, and a coarse dish
filled with coarser food.
Even the intrepid soul of Vivenzio shrunk with
dismay as he entered this abode, and heard the
ponderous doors triple-locked by the silent ruffians
who conducted him to it. Their silence seemed
prophetic of his fate, of the living grave that had
been prepared for him. His menaces and his entreaties,
his indignant appeals for justice, and his
impatient questioning of their intentions, were alike
vain. They listened, but spoke not. Fit ministers
of a crime that should have no tongue!
How dismal was the sound of their retiring steps!
And, as their faint echoes died along the winding
passages, a fearful presage grew within him, that
never more the face, or voice, or tread, of man,
would greet his senses. He had seen human beings
for the last time! And he had looked his last upon
the bright sky, and upon the smiling earth and
upon a beautiful world he loved and whose minion
he had been! Here he was to end his life—a life
he had just begun to revel in! And by what
means? By secret poison? or by murderous
assault? No—for then it had been needless to
bring him thither. Famine perhaps—a thousand
deaths in one ! It was terrible to think of it—but
it was yet more terrible to picture long, long years
of captivity in a solitude so appalling, a loneliness
so dreary, that thought, for want of fellowship,
would lose itself in madness, or stagnate into
idiocy.
He could not hope to escape, unless he had the
