The poor captive passed the first hour of this new and unknown punishment, with her mind perfectly lucid, and with thoughts full of logic, reason, and philosophy. Gradually, however, this tension fatigued her brain, and the night became lugubrious. Her positive reflections changed into vague and strange reveries. Fantastic images, painful memories, terrible apprehensions assailed her, and she found herself in a state neither of sleeping nor watching, yet where all her ideas assumed some form and seemed to float amid the darkness of her cell. Sometimes she fancied herself on the stage, and mentally sang a part that fatigued her, and the representation of which haunted her, without her being able to get rid of it: sometimes she saw herself in the hands of the executioner, with bare shoulders, amid a stupid and curious crowd, lacerated by the rod, while the king, with angry air, looked down from the balcony, and Anzoleto stood laughing in one corner. At last, she felt a kind of torpor, and saw nothing but the spectre of Albert in a cenotaph, making vain efforts to rise and come to her aid. Then, this image was effaced, and she fancied herself asleep in the grotto of Schreckenstein, while the sublime and sad notes of the violin uttered in the depths of the cavern Albert's eloquent and lacerating prayer. Consuelo, in fact, was but half asleep, and the sound of the instrument flattered her ear, and restored quiet to her soul. The phrases, however, were so united, though weakened by distance, and the modulations were so distinct, that she really fancied she heard them, and was not astonished at the fact. It seemed that this fantastic performance lasted more than an hour, and that it lost in the air its insensible gradations. Consuelo then sunk again to sleep and day began to dawn when she opened her eyes.
The first care she had was to look around her room, which she had not even looked at on the previous evening, so absorbed was she by the sensations of physical life. She was in a cell, perfectly naked, but clean, and warmed by a brick stove, which was lighted on the outside, and which shed no light in the room, though it maintained an equable temperature. One single arched window lighted the room, which yet was not too dark: the walls were white-washed and rather high.