light of departing day shed its gloom around him ere he arose from
that posture of utter and hopeless sorrow. He had taken no food. Not
one drop of water had cooled the fever of his parched lips. Sleep had
not visited his eyes for six-and-thirty hours. He was faint with
hunger; weary with watching, and with the excess of his emotions. He
tasted of his food; he drank with avidity of the water; and reeling
like a drunken man to his straw, cast himself upon it to brood again
over the appalling image that had fastened itself upon his almost
frenzied thoughts.

He slept. But his slumbers were not tranquil. He resisted, as long as
he could, their approach; and when, at last, enfeebled nature yielded
to their influence, he found no oblivion from his cares. Terrible
dreams haunted him--ghastly visions harrowed up his imagination--he
shouted and screamed, as if he already felt the dungeon's ponderous
roof descending on him--he breathed hard and thick, as though writhing
between its iron walls. Then would he spring up--stare wildly about
him--stretch forth his hands, to be sure he yet had space enough to
live--and, muttering some incoherent words, 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 stupor, 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! The three!--there were no
more!--and they seemed to number his own allotted 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 approximation of the latter. The contracted dimensions of his
mysterious prison were now too gross and palpable to be the juggle of
his heated 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