Such were the vague images and dreams of the past and future that
floated over his mind, as he lay in a heavy sort of lethargy on the
floor of his cell, and hour after hour passed away. It grew afternoon,
and the radiance of evening came on. The window of the cell overlooked
the broad Mediterranean, all one blue glitter of smiles and sparkles.
The white-winged boats were flitting lightly to and fro, like
gauzy-winged insects in the summer air,--the song of the fishermen
drawing their nets on the beach floated cheerily upward. Capri lay like
a half-dissolved opal in shimmering clouds of mist, and Naples
gleamed out pearly clear in the purple distance. Vesuvius, with its
cloud-spotted sides, its garlanded villas and villages, its silvery
crown of vapor, seemed a warm-hearted and genial old giant lying down
in his gorgeous repose and holding all things on his heaving bosom in a
kindly embrace.

So was the earth flooded with light and glory, that the tide poured into
the cell, giving the richness of an old Venetian painting to its bare
and squalid furniture. The crucifix glowed along all its sculptured
lines with rich golden hues. The breviary, whose many-colored leaves
fluttered as the wind from the sea drew inward, was yet brighter in its
gorgeous tints. It seemed a sort of devotional butterfly perched before
the grinning skull, which was bronzed by the enchanted light into warmer
tones of color, as if some remembrance of what once it saw and felt came
back upon it. So also the bare, miserable board which served for
the bed, and its rude pillow, were glorified. A stray sunbeam, too,
fluttered down on the floor like a pitying spirit, to light up that
pale, thin face, whose classic outlines had now a sharp, yellow setness,
like that of swooning or death; it seemed to linger compassionately on
the sunken, wasted cheeks, on the long black lashes that fell over the