What
added the last bitter sting to his punishment was that the same officer
for whom he had prepared the dungeon, an aged and meritorious colonel,
had just succeeded the late commandant of the fortress, recently
deceased, and, from having been the victim of his vengeance, had become
the master of his fate. He was thus deprived of the last melancholy
solace, the right of compassionating himself, and of accusing destiny,
hardly as it might use him, of injustice. To the acuteness of his other
suffering was now added a bitter self-contempt, contempt, and the pain
which to a sensitive mind is the severest--dependence upon the
generosity of a foe to whom he had shown none.

But that upright man was too noble-minded to take a mean revenge.
It pained him deeply to enforce the severities which his instructions
enjoined; but as an old soldier, accustomed to fulfil his orders to
the letter with blind fidelity, he could do no more than pity,
compassionate. The unhappy man found a more active assistant in the
chaplain of the garrison, who, touched by the sufferings of the
prisoner, which had just reached his ears, and then only through vague
and confused reports, instantly took a firm resolution to do something
to alleviate them. This excellent man, whose name I unwillingly
suppress, believed he could in no way better fulfil his holy vocation
than by bestowing his spiritual support and consolation upon a wretched
being deprived of all other hopes of mercy.

As he could not obtain permission from the commandant himself to visit
him he repaired in person to the capital, in order to urge his suit
personally with the prince. He fell at his feet, and implored mercy for
the unhappy man, who, shut out from the consolations of Christianity, a
privilege from which even the greatest crime ought not to debar him, was
pining in solitude, and perhaps on the brink of despair. With all the
intrepidity and dignity which the conscious discharge of duty inspires,
he entreated, nay demanded, free access to the prisoner, whom he claimed
as a penitent for whose soul he was responsible to heaven. The good
cause in which he spoke made him eloquent, and time had already somewhat
softened the prince's anger. He granted him permission to visit the
prisoner, and administer to his spiritual wants.

After a lapse of sixteen months, the first human face which the unhappy
G------ beheld was that of his new benefactor. The only friend he had
in the world he ow