The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1881-10-08
THE IRON SHROUD.
BY WILLIAM MUDF0RD.

of Scylla, and commanded magnificent view OF
Sicily in all its grandeur. Here, during the wars
of the Middle Ages when the fertile plains OF
Italy were devastated by hostile factions, those
prisoners were confined for whose ransom costly
price was demanded. Here, too, in dungeon
excavated deep in the solid rock, the miserable
victim was immured whom revenge pursued
the dark, fierce, and Implying revenge OF an
italian heart
yivenzio-the noble and the generous, the
fearless in battle, and the pride of Naples in her
sunny hours of peace,-the young, the brave, the
proud Vivenzio-fell beneath this subtle and re-
morseless spirit He was the prisoner of Tolti;
and he languished in that rock-encircled dun
geon which stood alone, and whose portals never
opened twice upon a living captive.
1t had the semblance of a vast cage; for the roof
and floor and sides were of iron, soldly wrought
and spaciously constructed. High above ran a
range of seven grated windows, guarded with
massy bars of the same metal, which admitted
light and air. Save these, and the tall folding
doors beneath them, which occupied the centre,
no chink OF chasm or projection broke the smooth,
black surface of the walls. An iron bedstead,
Uttered with straw, stood in one corner, and,
beside IT, a NeSSel OF water. anu d CodISt uiSh
filled with coarser food.
Even the intrepid soul Of Vivenzio shrunk
with dismay as he entered this abode, and heard
the ponderous doors triple-locked by the silent
ruffans who conducted him to it, Their silence
seemed prophetic of his fate, of the living grave
that had been prepared for him. His menaces
and his entreaties, his indignant appeals for
Justice and his impatient questioning OF their
intentions, were alike vain. They listened but
spoke not Fit ministers of a crime that should
have no tongue!
How dismal was the sound of their retiring
steps! And as their faint echoes died along the
winding passage, a fearful presage grew within
him, that nevermore the face or voice or tread of
man would greet his senses. He had seen human
beings for the last time! And he had looked his
last upon the bright sky and upon the smiling
earth and upon a beautiful world he loved, and
whose miniOn he had been. Here he was to end
his life-a life he had Just begun to revel in And
by what means? By secret poison, or by MUIR
derous assault? No; for then it had been need
less to bring him thither. Famine perhaps-a
thousand deaths in one! 1t was terrible to think
of it; but it was yet more terrible to picture
long, long years of captivity in a solitude ap-
palling. loneliness so dreary, that thought, for
want of fellowship, would lose itself in madness,
or stagnate into idiocy.
He could not hope to escape, unless he had the
power. with his bare hands, of rending asunder
the solid iron walls of his prison He could not
hope for liberty from the relenting mercies of his
enemy His instant death, under any form of re-
fined cruelty was not the object Of Tolfi for he
might have inflicted it, and he had not. 1t was
too evident, therefore, he was resrved for some
premeditated scheme of subtle vengeance: and
what vengeance could transcend in fiendish
malice either the slow death of famine or the
still slower one of solitary incarceration till the
last lingering spark of life expired, till reason
fed, and nothing should remain to perish but
the brute functions of the body?
1t was evening when VivenziO entered his
dungeon: and the approaching shades of night
wrapped it in total darkness, as he paced up and
down, revolving in his mind these horrible fore
bodings. No tolling bell from the castle or from
any neighboring church or convent, struck upon
his ears to tell how the hours passed. Frequently
he would stop and listen for some sound that
might betOken the vicinity of man; but the
solitude of the desert the silence of the tomb,
not so still and deep as the oppressive desola-
ton by which he was encompassed. His heart
sunk within him, and he threw himself deiectedly
upon his couch of straw. Here sleep gradually
obliterated the consciousness of misery: and
bland dreams waited his delighted spirit to
which were once glowing realities for him. in
whose ravishing illusions he lost the re-
membrance that he was Tolf's prisoner.
When he awoke, it was daylight; but how
long he had slept he knew not 1t might be
early morning, it might be sultry noon; for
he could measure time by no other note of its
progress than light and darkness. He had been
so happy in his sleep, amid friends who loved
him. and the sweeter endearments of those who
loved him as friends could not, that in the first
moments of waking, his startled mind seemed to
admit the knowledge Of his situation, as if it had
burst upon it for the first time fresh in all its ap-
palling horrors He gazed round with an air OF
dodbt and amazement, and took up handful OF
the straw upon which he lay, as though he would
ask himself what it meant. But memory, too
faithful to her Office, soon unveiled the melan-
choly past while reason shuddering at the task
flashed before his eyes the tremendous future
The contrast overpowed him. He remained to1
some time lamenting, like truth, the bright
visions that had vanished, and recoiling from the
present, which chung to him as a poisoned gar
ment.