I thought I
wandered through its halls of state and triumph--bare and empty
now!--and musing on its pride and might, extinct: for that was
past; all past: heard a voice say, 'Some tokens of its ancient
rule and some consoling reasons for its downfall, may be traced
here, yet!'
I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous rooms,
communicating with a prison near the palace; separated from it by a
lofty bridge crossing a narrow street; and called, I dreamed, The
Bridge of Sighs.
But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall; the lions'
mouths--now toothless--where, in the distempered horror of my
sleep, I thought denunciations of innocent men to the old wicked
Council, had been dropped through, many a time, when the night was
dark. So, when I saw the council-room to which such prisoners were
taken for examination, and the door by which they passed out, when
they were condemned--a door that never closed upon a man with life
and hope before him--my heart appeared to die within me.
It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, I descended from
the cheerful day into two ranges, one below another, of dismal,
awful, horrible stone cells.
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