With this awful sermon upon the imprisonment that awaited him, the jailer set down the lamp he held in his hand and went away. He returned in a minute or two, however, with some food, which he placed upon the table before which the young cavalier was still standing, exactly as the other had left him. The man gave him a cold look, as if merely to see how he bore it, and then once more quitted the dungeon, turning the key in the heavy lock.
Bernard de Rohan remained long in that same attitude, and filled with the same dark and melancholy thoughts. Still, still they pressed upon his brain, although he sought to banish them and to bear his condition with his usual equanimity and fortitude. He was not one ever to give way to despair where any opportunity existed for active exertion; but here he could do nothing. With his own hand he could not right himself. With his own voice he could not plead his cause. Talent or genius he might possess, but all in vain. Vigour and courage were useless. There was but one thing left--endurance; a species of courage which the very bravest do not always possess. Bernard de Rohan strove to summon it to his aid. It came but slowly, however; and, when he thought of Isabel of Brienne, his own sweet, beautiful bride, snatched from him in the very first moment that he could call her so, resolution forsook him, and in agony of heart he cast himself down upon the straw in his dungeon. Was that his bridal bed?
"Now, then, have I not kept faith with you?" said a voice in the chapel.
"Yes, in truth you have," replied a second voice; "but I fear we have been too late. The falling of that accursed horse has lost us the five minutes--the important five minutes on which all success in life so often depends."
"You should not bring fine-pampered Barbary steeds into these wild mountains, count," replied the other voice; "but a bold man is never too late. The lover is safe enough for a long time to come, and you can--"
"Hush! hush!" said the other, as if fearful that their conversation, though the tone in which they spoke was little louder than a whisper, should reach the ears of some one near.
"Oh! she has fainted," said the other. "She sank back upon my arm a minute or two ago. Here! Forli, bring me a lantern!"