The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

190 THE IllPROVVISATORB,
noisome; and so poor Ernest Rossi found, when, struck
down, but not killed, by Kalozy, he became a prisoner to
the Austrians. It might have been supposed that they
would have taken advantage of their gallant young foeman's
presence amongst them to destroy him, in vengeance
for what they had been taught by Kalozy to deem were his
magical practices against them; but the governor of the
town, into whose hands he had fallen, was an ignorant,
superstitious, and cruel tyrant; and while his sa'\'age
.nature suggested no other mode of dealing with his victim
than by torture, his superstition impelled him to believe he
might attain to superhuman privileges in communing with
the invisible world through the agency of the far-famed
seer. The indignation of the Austrians had been so vehement
against the supposed magician, that the governor had
great difficulty in rescuing Ernest from instant and deadly
·retaliation; but under the pretext of reserving him for
trial, and a more orderly mode of execution, he at last con- .
trived to possess himself of the person of the captive, with
whom he now determined to deal for his own private and
special purposes. As he soon found his efforts to bend
his unfortunate captive to his will unavailing, and fearing
to put him to death, lest his disembodied spirit should be
even more potent than his suffering mortal frame, he had
no means of satisfying his hatred aJld cowardice but by
the lowest species of retaliation he could devise, namely,
insult and miserable captivity. Sometimes he effected this
in deep cells where the light of the blessed sun never
came, where noisome things ran round the narrow space,
and the dripping of dank dews constantly irritated the
nerves with their weary vibrations; sometimes in cribs
contrived like the cage of the famous Cardinal Baillieu, too
low to allow the inmate to stand up - too narroW to allow
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