preceding day, as he paced to and fro, remained where he had cast it,
though it must have been displaced by the slightest motion of either of
the doors. This was evidence that could not be disputed; and it followed
there must be some secret machinery in the walls by which a person could
enter. He inspected them closely. They appeared to him one solid and
compact mass of iron; or joined, if joined they were, with such nice art
that no mark of division was perceptible. Again and again he surveyed
them, and the floor and the roof, and that range of visionary windows, as
he was now almost tempted to consider them: he could discover nothing,
absolutely nothing, to relieve his doubts or satisfy his curiosity.
Sometimes he fancied that altogether the dungeon had a more contracted
appearance,—that it looked smaller; but this he ascribed to fancy,
and the impression naturally produced upon his mind by the undeniable
disappearance of two of the windows.
With intense anxiety, Vivenzio looked forward to the return of night;
and, as it approached, he resolved that no treacherous sleep should
again betray him. Instead of seeking his bed of straw, he continued to
walk up and down his dungeon till daylight, straining his eyes in every
direction through the darkness, to watch for any appearances that might
explain these mysteries. While thus engaged, and, as nearly as he could
judge (by the time that afterward elapsed before the morning came in),
about two o’clock, there was a slight, tremulous motion of the floors.
He stooped. The motion lasted nearly a minute: but it was so extremely
gentle that he almost doubted whether it was real, or only imaginary.
He listened. Not a sound could be heard. Presently, however, he felt a
rush of cold air blow upon him; and, dashing toward the quarter whence
it seemed to proceed, he stumbled over something which he judged to be
the water ewer. The rush of cold air was no longer perceptible; and, as
Vivenzio stretched out his hands, he found himself close to the walls. He
remained motionless for a considerable time; but nothing occurred during
the remainder of the night to excite his attention, though he continued
to watch with unabated vigilance.
The first approaches of the morning were visible through the grated
windows, breaking, with faint divisions of light, the darkness that
still pervaded every other part, long before Vivenzio was enabled to
distinguish any object in his dungeon. Instinctively and fearfully he
turned his eyes, hot and inflamed with watching, toward them. There were
FOUR! He could _see_ only four: but it might be that some intervening
object prevented the fifth from becoming perceptible; and he waited
impatiently to ascertain if it were so. As the light strengthened,
however, and penetrated every corner of the cell, other objects of
amazement struck his sight. On the ground lay the broken fragments of
the pitcher he had used the day before, and, at a small distance from
them, nearer to the wall, stood the one he had noticed the first night.
It was filled with water, and beside it was his food. He was now certain,
that, by some mechanical contrivance, an opening was obtained through the
iron wall, and that through this opening the current of air had found
entrance. But how noiseless! for, had a feather even waved at the time,
he must have heard it. Again he examined that part of the wall; but both
to sight and touch it appeared one even and uniform surface, while, to
repeated and violent blows, there was no reverberating sound indicative
of hollowness.
This perplexing mystery had for a time withdrawn his thoughts from the
windows; but now, directing his eyes again toward them, he saw that
the fifth had disappeared in the same manner as the preceding two,
without the least distinguishable alteration of external appearances.
The remaining four looked as the seven had originally looked; that is,
occupying at irregular distances the top of the wall on that side of
the dungeon. The tall folding-door, too, still seemed to stand beneath,
in the centre of these four, as it had first stood in the centre of
the seven. But he could no longer doubt what, on the preceding day,
he fancied might be the effect of visual deception. The dungeon _was_
smaller. The roof had lowered; and the opposite ends had contracted the
intermediate distance by a space equal, he thought, to that over which
the three windows had extended. He was bewildered in vain imaginings to
account for these things. Some frightful purpose, some devilish torture
of mind or body, some unheard-of device for producing exquisite misery,
lurked, he was sure, in what had taken place.
Oppressed with this belief, and distracted more by the dreadful
uncertainty of whatever fate impended than he could be dismayed, he
thought, by the knowledge of the worst, he sat ruminating, hour after
hour, yielding his fears in succession to every haggard fancy. At last
a horrible suspicion flashed suddenly across his mind, and he started
up with a frantic air. “Yes!” he exclaimed, looking wildly round his
dungeon, and shuddering as he spoke,—“yes! it must be so! I see it! I
feel the maddening truth like scorching flames upon my brain! Eternal
God! support me! it must be so! Yes, yes, _that_ is to be my fate! Yon
roof will descend! these walls will hem me round, and slowly, slowly,
crush me in their iron arms! Lord God! look down upon me, and in mercy
strike me with instant death! O fiend! O devil!—is this your revenge?”
He dashed himself upon the ground in agony, tears burst from him, and the
sweat stood in large drops upon his face: he sobbed aloud, he tore his
hair, he rolled about like one suffering intolerable anguish of body,
and would have bitten the iron floor beneath him; he breathed fearful
curses upon Tolfi, and the next moment passionate prayers to Heaven for
immediate death. Then the violence of his grief became exhausted; and
he lay still, weeping as a child would weep. The twilight of departing
day shed its gloom around him ere he arose from that posture of utter
and hopeless sorrow. He had taken no food. Not one drop of water had
cooled the fever of his parched lips. Sleep had not visited his eyes for
six-and-thirty hours. He was faint with hunger; weary with watching, and
with the excess of his emotions. He tasted of his food; he drank with
avidity of the water, and reeling, like a drunken man, to his straw, cast
himself upon it to brood again over the appalling image that had fastened
itself upon his almost frenzied thoughts.
He slept; but his slumbers were not tranquil. He resisted, as long as he
could, their approach; and when, at last, enfeebled nature yielded to
their influence, he found no oblivion from his cares. Terrible dreams
haunted him; ghastly visions harrowed up his imagination; he shouted and
screamed, as if he already felt the dungeon’s ponderous roof descending
on him; he breathed hard and thick, as though writhing between its iron
walls. Then would he spring up, stare wildly about him, stretch forth
his hands to be sure he yet had space enough to live, and, muttering
some incoherent words, sink down again, to pass through the same fierce
vicissitudes of delirious sleep.
The morning of the fourth day dawned upon Vivenzio; but it was high noon
before his mind shook off its stupor, or he awoke to a full consciousness
of his situation. And what a fixed energy of despair sat upon his pale
features as he cast his eyes upwards, and gazed upon the THREE windows
that now alone remained! The three!—there were no more! and they seemed
to number his own allotted days. Slowly and calmly he next surveyed the
top and sides, and comprehended all the meaning of the diminished height
of the former, as well as of the gradual approximation of the latter. The
contracted dimensions of his mysterious prison were now too gross and
palpable to be the juggle of his heated imagination.
Still lost in wonder at the means, Vivenzio could put no cheat upon his
reason as to the end. By what horrible ingenuity it was contrived, that
walls and roofs and windows should thus silently and imperceptibly,
without noise and without motion, almost fold, as it were, within each
other, he knew not. He only knew they did so; and he vainly strove to
persuade himself it was the intention of the contriver to rack the
miserable wretch who might be immured there with anticipation merely of a
fate from which, in the very crisis of his agony, he was to be reprieved.
Gladly would he have clung even to this possibility, if his heart would
have let him; but he felt a dreadful assurance of its fallacy. And what
matchless inhumanity it was to doom the sufferer to such lingering
torments; to lead him day by day to so appalling a death, unsupported by
the consolations of religion, unvisited by any human being, abandoned to
himself, deserted of all, and denied even the sad privilege of knowing
that his cruel destiny would awaken pity! Alone he was to perish! Alone
he was to wait a slow-coming torture, whose most exquisite pangs would be
inflicted by that very solitude and that tardy coming.
“It is not death I fear,” he exclaimed, “but the death I must prepare
for! Methinks, too, I could meet even that, all horrible and revolting
as it is,—if it might overtake me now. But where shall I find fortitude
to tarry till it come? How can I outlive the three long days and nights
I have to live? There is no power within me to bid the hideous spectre
hence; none to make it familiar to my thoughts, or myself patient of
its errand. My thoughts rather will flee from me, and I grow mad in
looking at it. Oh! for a deep sleep to fall upon me! That so, in death’s
likeness, I might embrace death itself, and drink no more of the cup that
is presented to me than my fainting spirit has already tasted!”
In the midst of these lamentations, Vivenzio noticed that his accustomed
meal, with the pitcher of water, had been conveyed, as before, into his
dungeon. But this circumstance no longer excited his surprise. His mind
was overwhelmed with others of a far greater magnitude. It suggested,
however, a feeble hope of deliverance; and there is no hope so feeble as
not to yield some support to a heart bending under despair. He resolved
to watch, during the ensuing night, for the signs he had before observed,
and, should he again feel the gentle, tremulous motion of the floor, or
the current of air, to seize that moment for giving audible expression to
his misery. Some person must be near him, and within reach of his voice,
at the instant when his food was supplied; some one, perhaps, susceptible
of pity. Or, if not, to be told even that his apprehensions were just,
and that his fate _was_ to be what he foreboded, would be preferable
to a suspense which hung upon the possibility of his worst fears being
visionary.
The night came; and, as the hour approached when Vivenzio imagined he
might expect the signs, he stood fixed and silent as a statue. He feared
to breathe, almost, lest he might lose any sound which would warn him of
their coming. While thus listening, with every faculty of mind and body
strained to an agony of attention, it occurred to him he should be more
sensible of the motion, probably, if he stretched himself along the iron
floor. He accordingly laid himself softly down, and had not been long in
that position when—yes—he was certain of it—the floor moved under him! He
sprang up, and, in a voice suffocated nearly with emotion, called aloud.
He paused—the motion ceased—he felt no stream of air—all was hushed—no
voice answered to his—he burst into tears; and, as he sunk to the ground,
in renewed anguish, exclaimed, “O my God! my God! You alone have power to
save me now, or strengthen me for the trial you permit.”
Another morning dawned upon the wretched captive, and the fatal index of
his doom met his eyes. TWO windows!—and _two_ days—and all would be over!
Fresh food—fresh water! The mysterious visit had been paid, though he
had implored it in vain. But how awfully was his prayer answered in what
he now saw! The roof of the dungeon was within a foot of his head. The
two ends were so near that in six paces he trod the space between them.
Vivenzio shuddered as he gazed, and as his steps traversed the narrow
area; but his feelings no longer vented themselves in frantic wailings.
With folded arms, and clenched teeth; with eyes that were bloodshot from
much watching, and fixed with a vacant glare upon the ground; with a
hard, quick breathing, and a hurried walk,—he strode backward and forward
in silent musing for several hours. What mind shall conceive, what tongue
utter, or what pen describe, the dark and terrible character of his
thoughts? Like the fate that moulded them, they had no similitude in
the wide range of this world’s agony for man. Suddenly he stopped, and
his eyes were riveted upon that part of the wall which was over his bed
of straw. Words are inscribed there! A human language, traced by a human
hand! He rushes toward them; but his blood freezes as he reads,—
“I, Ludovico Sforza, tempted by the gold of the Prince of Tolfi, spent
three years in contriving and executing this accursed triumph of my
art. When it was completed, the perfidious Tolfi, more devil than man,
who conducted me hither one morning to be witness, as he said, of its
perfection, doomed _me_ to be the first victim of my own pernicious
skill; lest, as he declared, I should divulge the secret, or repeat the
effort of my ingenuity. May God pardon him, as I hope he will me, that
ministered to his unhallowed purpose. Miserable wretch, whoe’er thou art,
that readest these lines, fall on thy knees, and invoke, as I have done,
His sustaining mercy who alone can nerve thee to meet the vengeance of
Tolfi, armed with his tremendous engine which, in a few hours, must crush
_you_, as it will the needy wretch who made it.”
A deep groan burst from Vivenzio. He stood, like one transfixed, with
dilated eyes, expanded nostrils, and quivering lips, gazing at this fatal
inscription. It was as if a voice from the sepulchre had sounded in his
ears, “Prepare.” Hope forsook him. There was his sentence, recorded in
those dismal words. The future stood unveiled before him, ghastly and
appalling. His brain already feels the descending horror; his bones
seem to crack and crumble in the mighty grasp of the iron walls!
Unknowing what it is he does, he fumbles in his garment for some weapon
of self-destruction. He clenches his throat in his convulsive gripe,
as though he would strangle himself at once. He stares upon the walls;
and his warring spirit demands, “Will they not anticipate their office
if I dash my head against them?” An hysterical laugh chokes him as he
exclaims, “Why should I? He was but a man who died first in their fierce
embrace; and I should be less than man not to do as much!”
The evening sun was descending, and Vivenzio beheld its golden beams
streaming through one of the windows. What a thrill of joy shot through
his soul at the sight! It was a precious link that united him, for the
moment, with the world beyond. There was ecstasy in the thought.
As he gazed, long and earnestly, it seemed as if the windows had lowered
sufficiently for him to reach them. With one bound, he was beneath them;
with one wild spring, he clung to the bars. Whether it was so contrived,
purposely to madden with delight the wretch who looked, he knew not; but,
at the extremity of a long vista cut through the solid rocks, the ocean,
the sky, the setting sun, olive groves, shady walks, and, in the farthest
distance, delicious glimpses of magnificent Sicily, burst upon his sight.
How exquisite was the cool breeze as it swept across his cheek, loaded
with fragrance! He inhaled it as though it were the breath of continued
life. And there was a freshness in the landscape, and in the rippling of
the calm, green sea, that fell upon his withering heart like dew upon the
parched earth. How he gazed, and panted, and still clung to his hold!
sometimes hanging by one hand, sometimes by the other, and then grasping
the bars with both, as loath to quit the smiling paradise outstretched
before him; till, exhausted, and his hands swollen and benumbed, he
dropped helpless down, and lay stunned for a considerable time by the
fall.
When he recovered, the glorious vision had vanished. He was in darkness.
He doubted whether it was not a dream that had passed before his sleeping
fancy; but gradually his scattered thoughts returned, and with them came
remembrance. Yes! he had looked once again upon the gorgeous splendor
of nature! Once again his eyes had trembled beneath their veiled lids
at the sun’s radiance, and sought repose in the soft verdure of the
olive-tree or the gentle swell of undulating waves. O that he were a
mariner, exposed upon those waves to the worst fury of storm and tempest,
or a very wretch, loathsome with disease, plague-stricken, and his body
one leprous contagion from crown to sole, hunted forth to gasp out the
remnant of infectious life beneath those verdant trees, so he might shun
the destiny upon whose edge he tottered!
Vain thoughts like these would steal over his mind from time to time, in
spite of himself; but they scarcely moved it from that stupor into which
it had sunk, and which kept him, during the whole night, like one who
had been drugged with opium. He was equally insensible to the calls of
hunger and of thirst, though the third day was now commencing since even
a drop of water had passed his lips. He remained on the ground, sometimes
sitting, sometimes lying; at intervals sleeping heavily, and, when not
sleeping, silently brooding over what was to come, or talking aloud, in
disordered speech, of his wrongs, of his friends, of his home, and of
those he loved, with a confused mingling of all.
In this pitiable condition, the sixth and last morning dawned upon
Vivenzio, if dawn it might be called,—the dim, obscure light which
faintly struggled through the ONE SOLITARY window of his dungeon. He
could hardly be said to notice the melancholy token. And yet he did
notice it; for, as he raised his eyes and saw the portentous sign,
there was a slight convulsive distortion of his countenance. But what
did attract his notice, and at the sight of which his agitation was
excessive, was the change the iron bed had undergone. It was a bed no
longer. It stood before him, the visible semblance of a funeral couch or
bier! When he beheld this, he started from the ground; and, in raising
himself, suddenly struck his head against the roof, which was now so low
that he could no longer stand upright. “God’s will be done!” was all he
said, as he crouched his body, and placed his hand upon the bier; for
such it was. The iron bedstead had been so contrived, by the mechanical
art of Ludovico Sforza, that, as the advancing walls came in contact
with its head and feet, a pressure was produced upon concealed springs,
which, when made to play, set in motion a very simple though ingeniously
contrived machinery that effected the transformation. The object was, of
course, to heighten, in the closing scene of this horrible drama, all the
feelings of despair and anguish which the preceding one had aroused. For
the same reason, the last window was so made as to admit only a shadowy
kind of gloom rather than light, that the wretched captive might be
surrounded, as it were, with every seeming preparation for approaching
death.
Vivenzio seated himself on his bier. Then he knelt and prayed fervently;
and sometimes tears would gush from him. The air seemed thick, and he
breathed with difficulty; or it might be that he fancied it was so, from
the hot and narrow limits of his dungeon, which were now so diminished
that he could neither stand up nor lie down at his full length. But his
wasted spirits and oppressed mind no longer struggled with him. He was
past hope, and fear shook him no more. Happy if thus revenge had struck
its final blow; for he would have fallen beneath it almost unconscious of
a pang. But such a lethargy of the soul, after such an excitement of its
fiercest passions, had entered into the diabolical calculations of Tolfi;
and the fell artificer of his designs had imagined a counteracting device.
The tolling of an enormous bell struck upon the ears of Vivenzio! He
started. It beat but once. The sound was so close and stunning that it
seemed to shatter his very brain, while it echoed through the rocky
passages like reverberating peals of thunder. This was followed by a
sudden crash of the roof and walls, as if they were about to fall upon
and close around him at once. Vivenzio screamed, and instinctively spread
forth his arms, as though he had a giant’s strength to hold them back.
They had moved nearer to him, and were now motionless. Vivenzio looked
up, and saw the roof almost touching his head, even as he sat cowering
beneath it; and he felt that a further contraction of but a few inches
only must commence the frightful operation. Roused as he had been, he now
gasped for breath. His body shook violently; he was bent nearly double.
His hands rested upon either wall, and his feet were drawn under him to
avoid the pressure in front. Thus he remained for more than an hour,
when that deafening bell beat again, and again came the crash of horrid
death. But the concussion was now so great that it struck Vivenzio down.
As he lay gathered up in lessened bulk, the bell beat loud and frequent;
crash succeeded crash; and on and on and on came the mysterious engine
of death, till Vivenzio’s smothered groans were heard no more. He was
horribly crushed by the ponderous roof and collapsing sides; and the
flattened bier was his iron shroud.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE BELL-TOWER.
BY HERMAN MELVILLE.
In the South of Europe, nigh a once frescoed capital, now with dank mould
cankering its bloom, central in a plain, stands what, at distance, seems
the black mossed stump of some immeasurable pine, fallen, in forgotten
days, with Anak and the Titan.
As all along where the pine-tree falls its dissolution leaves a mossy
mound,—last-flung shadow of the perished trunk, never lengthening, never
lessening, unsubject to the fleet falsities of the sun, shade immutable,
and true gauge which cometh by prostration,—so westward from what seems
the stump, one steadfast spear of lichened ruin veins the plain.
From that tree-top, what birded chimes of silver throats had rung. A
stone pine; a metallic aviary in its crown: the Bell-Tower, built by the
great mechanician, the unblessed foundling, Bannadonna.
Like Babel’s, its base was laid in a high hour of renovated earth,
following the second deluge, when the waters of the Dark Ages had dried
up, and once more the green appeared. No wonder that, after so long and
deep submersion, the jubilant expectation of the race should, as with
Noah’s sons, soar into Shinar aspiration.
In firm resolve, no man in Europe at that period went beyond Bannadonna.
Enriched through commerce with the Levant, the state in which he lived
voted to have the noblest bell-tower in Italy. His repute assigned him to
be architect.
Stone by stone, month by month, the tower rose. Higher, higher;
snail-like in pace, but torch or rocket in its pride.
After the masons would depart, the builder, standing alone upon its
ever-ascending summit, at close of every day, saw that he overtopped
still higher walls and trees. He would tarry till a late hour there,
wrapped in schemes of other and still loftier piles. Those who of saints’
days thronged the spot,—hanging to the rude poles of scaffolding, like
sailors on yards or bees on boughs, unmindful of lime and dust and
falling chips of stone,—their homage not the less inspirited him to
self-esteem.
At length the holiday of the Tower came. To the sound of viols, the
climax-stone slowly rose in air, and, amid the firing of ordnance, was
laid by Bannadonna’s hands upon the final course. Then mounting it, he
stood erect, alone, with folded arms, gazing upon the white summits of
blue inland Alps, and whiter crests of bluer Alps off-shore,—sights
invisible from the plain. Invisible, too, from thence was that eye he
turned below, when, like the cannon-booms, came up to him the people’s
combustions of applause.
That which stirred them so was, seeing with what serenity the builder
stood three hundred feet in air, upon an unrailed perch. This none but he
durst do. But his periodic standing upon the pile, in each stage of its
growth,—such discipline had its last result.
Little remained now but the bells. These, in all respects, must
correspond with their receptacle.