The Viper of Milan: a Romance of Lombardy

The storm had risen; the low whispering of the wind, the distant rumbles of the thunder, gathering unheeded, burst suddenly into a tempest.

Its very fury spoke it brief, yet many cowered and shrank before it, as if its termination must be the termination of the world. And to no one did it strike more fear than to the solitary prisoner in the castle of Brescia--Gian Visconti. In obedience to Carrara's orders, he had been placed in a separate chamber, as far from the other prisoners as space allowed. His chamber was a circular, vault-like space, once serving as antechamber to a gloomy suite of rooms beyond, in which Barnabas Visconti had chosen to beguile the summer heat. The doors of this suite were locked; Gian Visconti himself had locked them, when he and his father last came there together. This vault-like room was high and and, in the blackness of the storm, pitch dark. Visconti sat underneath one of the windows, whither he had dragged the wooden stool, the sole furniture the place contained; his face was buried in his hands, and he writhed in horror.