Page:Iron shroud, or, Italian revenge (3).pdf/13

13 incoherent word, 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 stuper, 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 1 The three !—there were no more!—and they seemed to number his own alloted 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 approximination of the latter. The contracted dimensions of his mysterious prison were now too gross and palpable to be the juggle of his 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 in the very crisis of his agony, he was to be reprieved. Gladly would he have clung even to this possibility, if his heart would have let him ; but he felt a dreadful assurance of its fallacy. And what matchless inhumanity it was to doom the sufferer to such lingering torments—to lead him day by day to so appalling a death, unsupported by the consolations of religion, unvisited by any human