ance could transcend in fiendish
malice, either the slow death of famine, or the still slower one of
solitary incarceration, till the last lingering spark of life expired,
or till 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 night 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 convent, struck
upon his ear to tell how the hours passed. Frequently he would stop
and listen for some sound that might betoken the vicinity of man; but
the solitude of the desert, the silence of the tomb, are not so still
and deep as the oppressive desolation by which he was encompassed. His
heart sank within him, and he threw himself dejectedly down upon his
couch of straw. Here sleep gradually obliterated the consciousness of
misery, and bland dreams wafted his delighted spirit to scenes which
were once glowing realities for him, in whose ravishing illusions he
soon lost the remembrance that he was Tolfi's prisoner.

When he awoke, it was daylight; but how long he had slept he knew not.
It might be early morning, or it might be sultry noon, for he could
measure time by no other note of its progress than light and darkness.
He had been so happy in his sleep, amid friends who loved him, and the
sweeter endearments of those who loved him as friends could not, that
in the first moments of waking, his startled mind seemed to admit the
knowledge of his situation, as if it had burst upon it for the first
time, fresh in all its appalling horrors. He gazed round with an air
of doubt and amazement, and took up a handful of the straw upon which
he lay, as though he would ask himself what it meant. But memory, too
faithful to her office, soon unveiled the melancholy past, while
reason, shuddering at the task, flashed before his eyes the tremendous
future. The contrast overpowered him. He remained for some time
lamenting, like a truth, the bright visions that had vanished; and
recoiling from the present, which clung to him as a poisoned garment.

When he grew more calm, he surveyed his gloomy dungeon. Alas! the
stronger light of day only served to confirm what the gloomy
indistinctness of the preceding evening had partially disclosed, the
utter impossibility of escape. As, however, his eyes wandered round
and