The fitful wind whistled up, wild and plaintive; the river chafed and
bubbled through the iron grating below; the loose scales of the dragon
clashed as the night breezes reached them: and these sounds were still
to him as the language of his gods, which filled him with a fearful
rapture, and inspired him, in the terrible degradation of his being, as
with a new soul. He listened and listened yet. Fragments of wild
fancies--the vain yearnings of the disinherited mind to recover its
divine birthright of boundless thought--now thrilled through him, and
held him still and speechless where he knelt.
But at length, through the gloomy silence of the recess, he heard the
voice of Goisvintha raised once more, and in hoarse, wild tones calling
aloud for light and help. The agony of pain and suspense, the awful
sense of darkness and stillness, of solitary bondage and slow torment,
had at last effected that which no open peril, no common menace of
violent death could have produced. She yielded to fear and despair--
sank prostrate under a paralysing, superstitious dread.
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