f 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 loth to quit the smiling paradise
outstretched before him; till exhausted, and his hands swollen and
benumbed, he dropped 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 came 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 those 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 gasp 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 night, like
one who had been drugged with opium. He was equally insensible to the
calls of hunger and of thirst, though the third day was now commencing
since even a drop of water had passed his lips. He remained on the
ground, sometimes sitting, sometimes lying; at intervals, sleeping
heavily; and when not sleeping, silently brooding over what was to
come, or talking aloud, in disordered speech, of his wrongs, of his
friends, of his home, and of those he loved, with a confused mingling
of all.

In this pitiable condition, the sixth and last morning dawned upon
Vivenzio, if dawn it might be called--the dim, obscure light which
faintly struggled through the ONE SOLITARY window of his dungeon. He
could hardly be said to notice the melancholy token. And yet he did
notice it; for as he raised his eyes and saw the portentous sign,
there was a slight convulsive distortion of his countenance. But what
did a