VI.
Think of it! The birds sing—the sun shines—the leaves rustle—the flowers bud and bloom—children shout—young hearts are happy—the world wheels on—and such tragedies are, and always have been!
I sat with the old Marchesa upon her balcony, and listened to this terrible tale. She tells it no more, for she is gone now. The Marchesa tells it no more, but Venice tells it still; and as you glide in your black gondola along the canal, under the balconies, in the full moonlight of summer nights, listen and listen; and vaguely in your heart or in your fancy you will hear the tragic strain.
THE TORTURE CHAMBER.
BY WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER.
Down the broad, imperial Danube,
As its wandering waters guide,
Past the mountains and the meadows,
Winding with the stream, we glide.
Ratisbon we leave behind us,
Where the spires and gables throng,
And the huge cathedral rises,
Like a fortress, vast and strong.
Close beside it, stands the Town-Hall,
With its massive tower, alone,
Brooding o'er the dismal secret,
Hidden in its heart of stone.
There, beneath the old foundations,
Lay the prisons of the State,
Like the last abodes of vengeance,
In the fabled realms of Fate.
And the tides of life above them,
Drifted ever, near and wide,
As at Venice, round the prisons,
Sweeps the sea's incessant tide.
Never, like the far-off dashing,
Or the nearer rush of waves,
Came the tread or murmur downward,
To those dim, unechoing caves.
There the dungeon clasped its victim,
And a stupor chained his breath.
Till the torture woke his senses,
With a sharper touch than death.
Now, through all the vacant silence,
Reign the darkness and the damp,
Broken only when the traveller
Comes to gaze, with guide and lamp.
All about him, black and shattered,
Eaten with the rust of Time,
Lie the fearful signs and tokens
Of an age when Law was Crime.
And the guide, with grim precision,
Tells the dismal tale once more,
Tells to living men the tortures
Living men have borne before.
Well that speechless things, unconscious,
Furnish forth that place of dread,
Guiltless of the crimes they witnessed,
Guiltless of the blood they shed;
Else what direful lamentations,
And what revelations dire,
Ceaseless from their lips would echo,
Tossed in memory's penal fire.
Even as we gaze, the fancy
With a sudden life-gush warms,
And, once more, the Torture Chamber,
With its murderous tenants swarms.
Yonder, through the narrow archway,
Comes the culprit in the gloom,
Falters on the fatal threshold—
Totters to the bloody doom.
Here the executioner, lurking,
Waits, with brutal thirst, his hour,
Tool of bloodier men and bolder,
Drunken with the dregs of power.
There the careful leech sits patient,
Watching pulse, and hue, and breath,
Weighing life's remaining scruples
With the heavier chance of death.
Eking out the little remnant,
Lest the victim die too soon,
And the torture of the morning
Spare the torture of the noon.
Here, behind the heavy grating,
Sits the scribe, with pen and scroll,
Waiting till the giant terror
Bursts the secrets of the soul;
Till the fearful tale of treason
From the shrinking lips is wrung,
Or the final, false confession
Quivers from the trembling tongue;
When the spirit, torn and tempted,
Tried beyond its utmost scope,
By an anguish past endurance,
Madly cancels all its hope;
From the pointed cliffs of torture,
With its shrieks upon the air,
Suicidal, plunging blindly,
In the frenzy of despair!
But the grey old tower is fading,
Fades, in sunshine, from the eye,
Like some evil bird whose pinion
Dimly blots the distant sky.
So the ancient gloom and terror
Of the ages fade away,
In the sunlight of the present,
Of our better, purer day!