As the question was asked by the heart of the wretched man, it found its answer in one fearful doubt.
“And am I, in truth, within the bounds of that fearful place, which wild Poets have fancied, and dark-robed Monks have preached? Am I in sooth lost, and lost forever? Is death a dream? or an eternal succession of realities that seem but dreams—horrors too fearful for even the damned to believe? And this, this is—hell! I could bear the tortures of the eternal fire, the lash of the fiends I might defy, the lightnings of wrath would inspire with me with some portion of the Awful Spirit who winged their bolts of vengeance—but this narrow cell, this eternal confinement in a place visited only by Dreams, while hunger tortures and thirst burns, hope animates, and despair holds but half the human heart—this, this is too horrible. God of vengeance, give me, oh give, the punishment of the undying worm, the torture of the eternal frame, but spare, oh spare me—this!”
He fell on his knees, and kissed the cold floor as he bent his forehead against his clenched hands, making the narrow cell all alive with his shriek—
“Spare; oh spare me—this!”
As he bowed low on the floor, a singular sound—most singular in such a place—met his ear. It was but a low sound, yet it was a fearful one.
He heard the deep breathing of a living creature.
It might be the echo of his own broken gasps, the thought flashed over the mind of Adrian, and for a moment he held his breath, and listened with all his soul absorbed in the result. Again the deep breathing of a human creature met his ear—
“Is it man or devil?” thus ran the thoughts of Adrian—“Mayhap he may give me water to quench my thirst, or mayhap he will—ha, ha,—take my accursed life. Could I but speak—for my voice does nought but murmur—I’d even ask him to plunge his poignard in my heart.”
A whizzing sound disturbed the air, and at the very instant the blow of a sword descended on the left arm of Adrian Di Albarone, while a heavy body fell to the floor, within two paces of the spot where he knelt.
“The blood flows from the wound,” the glad thought darted over the mind of the Buried-Alive, “Would I had strength to tear the doublet-sleeve from the arm, then I might drink my own blood. Yet hold—the blood oozes through the gash in the sleeve, and, and Great * * *! I may drink my own blood!”