The storm had risen, the low whispering of the wind, the distant rumbles of the thunder, gathering unheeded, burst suddenly into a tempest.
Its very fury spoke it brief, yet many cowered and shrank before it, as if its termination must be the termination of the world. And to no one did it strike more fear than to the solitary prisoner in the castle of Brescia—Gian Visconti. In obedience to Carrara's orders, he had been placed in a separate chamber, as far from the other prisoners as space allowed. His chamber was a circular, vault-like space, once serving as antechamber to a gloomy suite of rooms beyond, in which Barnabas Visconti had chosen to beguile the summer heat. The doors of this suite were locked; Gian Visconti himself had locked them, when he and his father last came there together. This vault-like room was high and ill-lit, and, in the blackness of the storm, pitch dark. Visconti sat underneath one of the windows, whither he had dragged the wooden stool, the sole furniture the place contained; his face was buried in his hands, and he writhed in horror.
The wind howled and tore at the locked doors, making them creak and groan; the thunder shook the building; and at every fresh convulsion Visconti shrieked aloud in unison.
The lightning, flashing blue through the crevices, seemed to play about that inner door, and he cowered from the sight, and bit at his fingers in a fierce endeavor to resist the madness seizing him.
It was not so very long ago that he had turned the great key behind him in that ponderous door, and ridden from the deed he had done, shouting through the midnight. He thought then never to return, and here he was, thrust in alone, and his madness on him. Visconti staggered from his seat, groping blindly.
The blackness seemed to whirl with faces and clutching, tearing fingers; he knew not where he was—he could see nothing—blackness and space—seemingly unbounded.
Another flash revealed to him that he had drawn near that inner door—in the instant it was visible; it seemed to open and shut—quickly.
Visconti fell back against the wall, and wrestled with his terrors as if they were some living thing, and again with savage teeth he bit into his flesh.
But the floor was opening beneath him, opening into gulfs deep and still deeper, bottomless.
"I am mad!" said Visconti, and shrieked and howled with the storm. It did not help him; he heard hurrying feet through all the alarm of the tempest, hurrying to him behind that locked door. Let him not look, for what he feared to see the dark could not conceal—and now they were at the door, and now they were fitting a key.