4
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 power, with his bare hands, of rending
asunder the solid iron walls of his prison.
He could not hope for liberty from the relenting
mercies of his enemy. His instant
death, under any form of refined cruelty, was
not the object of Tolfi, for he might have inflicted
it, and he had not. It was two evident,
therefore, he was reserved for some
premeditated scheme of subtile vengeance ; and
what vengeance could transcend in fiendish
malice, either the slow death of famine, or the
still slower one of solitary incarceration, til
the last lingering spark of life expired, or reason
fled, and nothing should remain to perish
but the brute functions of the body?
It was evening when Vivenzio entered his
dungeon, and the approaching shades of nigh
wrapped it in total darkness, as he paced up
and down, revolving in his mind these horrible
forebodings. No tolling bell from the
castle, or from any neighbouring church or