Page:Iron shroud, or, Italian revenge (3).pdf/18

18 sight. How exquisite was the cool breeze as it swept across his cheek, loaded with fragrance! He inhaled it as though it were the breath of continued life. And there was a freshness in the landscape; and in the rippling of the calm green sea, that fell upon his withering heart like dew upon the parched earth. How he gazed and panted, and still clung to his hold! sometimes hanging by one hand, sometimes by the other, and then grasping the bars with both, as loath to quite the smiling paradise outstretched before him; till exhausted, and his hands swollen and benumbed, he droped helpless down, and lay stunned for a considerable time by the fall. When he recovered, the glorious vision had vanished. He was in darkness. He doubted whether it was not a dream that had passed before his sleeping fancy; but gradually his scattered thoughts returned, and with them remembrance. Yes ; he had looked once again upon the gorgeous splendour of nature! Once again his eyes had trembled beneath their veiled lids, at the sun’s radiance, and sought repose in the soft verdure of the olive tree, or the gentle swell of undulating waves. Oh, that he were a mariner, exposed upon the waves to the worst fury of storm and tempest; or a very wretch, loathsome with disease, plague-stricken, and his body one leprous contagion from crown to sole, hunted forth to grasp out the remnant of infectious life beneath those verdant trees, so he might shun the destiny upon whose edge he tottered! Vain thoughts like these would steal over his mind from time to time, in spite of himself; but they scarcely moved it from that stupor into which it had sunk, and which kept him, during the whole