Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/272

261 cage, in which they had shut their brilliant-plumaged bird. Her hands rested on the slab of granite that was her only table; links of steel held the wrists together: they had allowed her no change of raiment, and the lustrous colours and gold broideries of the masque dress still swept the damp flags of the floor, though all jewels had been taken from her. She had been here six days and six nights a captive of the Bourbons; what was yet worse, a captive of the Church.

Food of the coarsest and the scantiest was all that had been allotted her, and once—"for contumacy,"—her priestly gaolers' hands had been stretched to tear down the silks and lace from her. shoulders, and bruise and lacerate them with the scourge,—once, when the dignity that they were about to outrage so foully had made the monk, who was bidden to the office, drop the lash, aghast and trembling, and his superior, who had directed the infamy, feel too much shame in the moment to hound him on to his work. They had desisted for twenty-four hours more. "By then," they had muttered, "the rebellious subject might have broken her silence, and become less obdurate to the due demands of Church and King."

The twenty-four hours had well nigh gone by, but