, 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
being, abandoned to himself, deserted of all, and denied even the sad
privilege of knowing that his cruel destiny would awaken pity! Alone
he was to perish!--alone he was to wait a slow coming torture, whose
most exquisite pangs would be inflicted by that very solitude and that
tardy coming!

"It is not death I fear," he exclaimed, "but the death I must prepare
for! Methinks, too, I could meet even that--all horrible and revolting
as it is--if it might overtake me now. But where shall I find
fortitude to tarry till it come? How can I outlive the three long days
and nights I have to live? There is no power within me to bid the
hideous spectre hence--none to make it familiar to my thoughts; or
myself, patient of its errand. My thoughts, rather, will flee from me,
and I grow mad in looking at it. Oh! for a deep sleep to fall upon
me! That so, in death's likeness, I might embrace death itself, and
drink no more of the cup that is presented to me, than my fainting
spirit has already tasted!"

In the midst of these lamentations, Vivenzio noticed that his
accustomed meal, with the pitcher of water, had been conveyed, as
before, into his dungeon. But this circumstance no longer excited his
surprise. His mind was overwhelmed with others of a far greater
magnitude. It suggested, however, a feeble hope of deliverance; and
there is no hope so feeble as not to yield some support to a heart
bending under despair. He resolved to watch, during the ensuing night,
for the signs he had before observed; and should he again feel the
gentle, tremulous motion of the floor, or the current of air, to seize
that moment for giving audible expression to his misery. Some person
must be near him, and within reach of his voice, at the instant when
his food was supplied; some one, perhaps, susceptible of pity. Or if
not, to be told even that his apprehensions were just, and that his
fate _was_ to be what he foreboded, would be preferable to a suspense
which hung upon the possibility of his worst fears being visionary.

The night came; and as the hour approa