I was in poor health on leaving Venice, and the journey had fatigued me exceedingly. I had a fever, and felt severe pains, both in my head and my limbs. Illness increased my irritation, and very probably the last had an equally ill effect upon my frame.
We were consigned over to the superintendent of Spielberg, and our names were registered in the same list as that of the robbers. The imperial commissary shook our hands upon taking leave, and was evidently affected. “Farewell,” he said, “and let me recommend to you calmness and submission: for I assure you the least infraction of discipline will be punished by the governor in the severest manner.”
The consignment being made out, my friend and myself were conducted into a subterranean gallery, where two dismal-looking dungeons were unlocked, at a distance from each other. In one of these I was entombed alive, and poor Maroncelli in the other.
CHAPTER LVIII.
How bitter is it, after having bid adieu to so many beloved objects, and there remains only a single one between yourself and utter solitude, the solitude of chains and a living death, to be separated even from that one! Maroncelli, on leaving me, ill and dejected, shed tears over me as one whom, it was most probable, he would never more behold. In him, too, I lamented a noble-minded man, cut off in the splendour of his intellect, and the vigour of his days, snatched from society, all its duties and its pleasures, and even from “the common air, the earth, the sky.” Yet he survived the unheard of afflictions heaped upon him, but in what a state did he leave his living tomb!
When I found myself alone in that horrid cavern, heard the closing of the iron doors, the rattling of chains, and by the gloomy light of a high window, saw the wooden bench destined for my couch, with an enormous chain fixed in the wall, I sat down, in sullen rage, on my hard resting-place, and taking up the chain, measured its length, in the belief that it was destined for me.
In half an hour I caught the sound of locks and keys; the door opened, and the head-jailer handed me a jug of water.
“Here is something to drink,” he said in a rough tone, “and you will have your loaf to-morrow.”
“Thanks, my good man.”
“I am not good,” was the reply.