CHAPTER II.
In the meantime, Ugo, who had received orders from Zastrozzi not to allow Verezzi to die, came at the accustomed hour to bring provisions, but finding that, in the last night’s storm, the rock had been struck by lightning, concluded that Verezzi had lost his life amid the ruins, and he went with this news to Zastrozzi. Zastrozzi, who, for inexplicable reasons, wished not Verezzi’s death, sent Ugo and Bernardo to search for him.
After a long scrutiny they discovered their hapless victim. He was chained to the rock where they had left him, but in that exhausted condition which want of food and a violent fever had reduced him to.
They unchained him, and lifting him into a chariot, after four hours’ rapid travelling, brought the insensible Verezzi to a cottage, inhabited by an old woman alone. The cottage stood on an immense heath, lonely, desolate, and remote from other human habitation.
Zastrozzi waited their arrival with impatience. Eagerly he flew to meet them, and, with a demoniac smile, surveyed the agonised features of his prey, who lay insensible and stretched on the shoulders of Ugo.
“His life must not be lost,” exclaimed Zastrozzi; “I have need of it. Tell Bianca, therefore, to prepare a bed.”
Ugo obeyed, and Bernardo followed, bearing the emaciated Verezzi. A physician was sent for, who declared that the crisis of the fever which had attacked him being past, proper care might reinstate him; but that the disorder having attacked his brain, a tranquillity of mind was absolutely necessary for his recovery.
Zastrozzi, to whom the life, though not the happiness of Verezzi was requisite, saw that his too eager desire for revenge had carried him beyond his point. He saw that some deception was requisite; he accordingly instructed the old woman to inform him, when he recovered, that he was placed in this situation because the physician had asserted that the air of this country was necessary for a recovery from a brain fever which attacked him.
It was long before Verezzi recovered—long did he languish in torpid insensibility, during which his soul seemed to have winged its way to happier regions.
At last, however, he recovered, and the first use he made of his senses was to inquire where he was.