Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/239

 raptured from having bad a sure hope of deliverance, even so, on the other hand, were we affected by great and boundless melancholy when all hope was taken from us, especially when the aga came to us in a fortnight and declared that we must not hope to quit the tower, because the Sultan, as well as Ibrahim Pasha and the Christian ambassadors, had gone from Constantinople, and that, whereas we could have procured our freedom for 200 ducats, we had purposely deprived ourselves of it. He also caused us to be told several times by the guards that we must remain in the tower till the Sultan returned from the war. At this we were exceedingly terrified, and, fully believing that it was so, wept heartily over our misery and misfortune; nevertheless, we ceased not to implore the aga, for the sake of the recompence of their prophet Mahomet, to allow us to go only once more among the merchants and try to borrow the money. But he would not give permission, but declared that it was too late, and all our negotiating was in vain.

Here every man can estimate how we poor prisoners felt about the heart when, after having had a fortnight ago a certain hope of liberation, that hope was unexpectedly taken from us; and verily it was with us just as with a man who has climbed out of a deep well up to the wall that surmounts it, when, just as he is about to step out, his hands have given way, and he has fallen back again into the deep well, without having any hope of climbing out of it any more. While I write this, and call that time to remembrance, I feel even now how mournful my heart was then, and cannot write more upon that subject for sorrow. Therefore, praised for ever and ever be the Lord God Most High, whom, out of His