13
Yon roof will descend!—these walls will hem
me round—and slowly, slowly, crush me in
their iron arms! Lord God! look down upon
me, and in mercy strike me with instant death!
Oh, fiend, devil—is this your revenge?”
He dashed himself upon the ground in
agony;—tears burst from him, and the sweat
stood in large drops upon his face—he sobbed
aloud—he tore his hair—he rolled about like
one suffering intolerable anguish of body, and
would have bitten the iron floor beneath him;
he breathed fearful curses upon Tolfi, and the
next moment passionate prayers to heaven for
immediate death. Then the violence of his
grief became exhausted, and he lay still, weeping
as a child would weep. The twilight of
departing day shed its gloom around him ere
he arose from that posture of utter and hopeless
sorrow. He had taken no food. Not one
drop of water had cooled the fever of his parched
lips. Sleep had not visited his eyes for
six and thirty hours. He was faint with
hunger; weary with watching, and with the
excess of his emotions. He tasted of his food;
he drank with avidity of the water; and reeling
like a drunken man to his straw, cast himself
upon it to brood again over the appaling
image that had fastened itself upon his almost
frenzied thoughts.
He slept. But his slumbers were not tranquil.
He resisted, as long as could, their ap(illegible text)
and when, at last, enfeebled nature
