Impia tortorum longas hic turba furores

Sanguinis innocui non satiata, aluit.

Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.

(Here the wicked mob, unappeased,

long cherished a hatred of innocent blood.
Now that the fatherland is saved, and the cave of death demolished;
where grim death has been, life and health appear.)

- Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site of the
Jacobin Club House in Paris.

I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at
length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving
me. The sentence, the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct
accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial
voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my
soul the idea of revolution, perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of
a mill-wheel. This only for a brief period, for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a
while, I saw, but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-
robed judges. They appeared to me white — whiter than the sheet upon which I
trace these words — and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of
their expression of firmness, of immovable resolution, of stern contempt of
human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was fate were still issuing
from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the
syllables of my name, and I shuddered, because no sound succeeded. I saw, too,
for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving
of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment; and then
1
my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the
aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me: but then
all at once there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre
in my frame thrill, as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the
angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that
from them there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich
musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The
thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full
appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain
it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall
candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of
darkness superened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing
descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the
universe.

I had swooned; but still will not say that all of conscious- ness was lost.
What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all
was not lost. In the deepest slumber — no! In delirium — no! In a swoon — no!
In death — no! Even in the grave all was not lost. Else there is no immortality for
man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web
of some dream. Yet in a second afterwards (so frail may that web have been) we
remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there
are two stages; first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the
sense of physical existence. It seems probable that if, upon reaching the second
stage, we could recall the impressions of the first, we should find these
impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is, what?
How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But if the
impressions of what I have termed the first stage are not at will recalled, yet,
after long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they
come? He who has never swooned is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly
familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad
visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of
some novel flower; is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of
some musical cadence which has never 2 before arrested his attention.
Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavors to remember, amid earnest struggles to
regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which my soul had
lapsed, there have been moments when I have dreamed of success; there have
been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up remembrances which the
lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to that
condition of seeming unconsciousness. These shadows of memory tell
indistinctly of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down — down — still
down — till a hideous dizziness op- pressed me at the mere idea of the
interminableness of the descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my heart on
account of that heart’s unnatural stillness. Then comes a sense of sudden
motionlessness throughout all things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!)
had outrun, in their descent, the limits of the limitless, and paused from the
wearisomeness of their toil. After this I call to mind flatness and dampness; and
then all is madness — the madness of a memory which busies itself among
forbidden things.

Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound — the
tumultuous motion of the heart, and in my ears the sound of its beating. Then a
pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and touch, a tingling
sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence,
without thought, a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought,
and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavor to comprehend my true state. Then
a strong desire to lapse into insensibility. Then a rushing revival of soul and a
successful effort to move. And now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of
the sable raperies, of the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon. Then entire
forgetfulness of all that followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of
endeavor have enabled me vaguely to recall. So far I had not opened my eyes. I
felt that I lay upon my back unbound. I reached out my hand, and it fell heavily
upon something damp and hard. There I suffered it to remain for many minutes,
while I strove to imagine where and what I could be. I longed, yet dared not, to
employ my vision. I dreaded the first glance at objects around me. It was not that
I feared to look upon things horrible, but that I grew aghast lest there should be
nothing to see. At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my
eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were 3 confirmed. The blackness of eternal night
encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to
oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay quietly,
and made effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind the inquisitorial
proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real condition. The
sentence had passed, and it appeared to me that a very long interval of time had
since elapsed. Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself actually dead. Such a
supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction, is altogether inconsistent
with real existence; — but where and in what state was I? The condemned to
death, I knew, perished usually at the auto-de-fés, and one of these had been
held on the very night of the day of my trial. Had I been remanded to my
dungeon, to await the next sacrifice, which would not take place for many
months? This I at once saw could not be. Victims had been in immediate
demand. Moreover my dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at Toledo,
had stone floors, and light was not altogether excluded.

A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart,
and for a brief period I once more relapsed into insensibility. Upon recovering, I
at once started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every fiber. I thrust my arms
wildly above and around me in all directions. I felt nothing; yet dreaded to move
a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a TOMB. Perspiration burst from
every pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead. The agony of
suspense grew at length intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my
arms extended, and my eyes straining from their sockets, in the hope of catching
some faint ray of light. I proceeded for many paces, but still all was blackness and
vacancy. I breathed more freely. It seemed evident that mine was not, at least,
the most hideous of fates.

And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came

thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of
Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated — fables I had
always deemed them — but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a
whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness;
or what fate perhaps even more fearful awaited me? That the result would be
death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the
4
character of my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied
or distracted me.

My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction. It

was a wall, seemingly of stone masonry — very smooth, slimy, and cold. I
followed it up; stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain antique
narratives had inspired me. This process, however, afforded me no means of
ascertaining the dimensions of my dungeon; as I might make its circuit, and
return to the point whence I set out, without being aware of the fact, so perfectly
uniform seemed the wall. I therefore sought the knife which had been in my
pocket when led into the inquisitorial chamber, but it was gone; my clothes had
been exchanged for a wrap- per of coarse serge. I had thought of forcing the
blade in some minute crevice of the masonry, so as to identify my point of
departure. The difficulty, nevertheless, was but trivial, although, in the disorder
of my fancy, it seemed at first insuperable. I tore a part of the hem from the
robe, and placed the fragment at full length, and at right angles to the wall. In
groping my way around the prison, I could not fail to encounter this rag upon
completing the circuit. So, at least, I thought, but I had not counted upon the
extent of the dungeon, or upon my own weakness. The ground was moist and
slippery. I staggered onward for some time, when I stumbled and fell. My
excessive fatigue induced me to remain prostrate, and sleep soon overtook me
as I lay.

Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and
a pitcher with water. I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this
circumstance, but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly afterwards I resumed my
tour around the prison, and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the
serge. Up to the period when I fell I had counted fifty-two paces, and upon
resuming my walk I had counted forty-eight more, when I arrived at the rag.
There were in all, then, a hundred paces; and, admitting two paces to the yard, I
presumed the dungeon to be fifty yards in circuit. I had met, however, with
many angles in the wall, and thus I could form no guess at the shape of the vault,
for vault I could not help supposing it to be.

5
 I had little object — certainly no hope — in these researches, but a
vague curiosity prompted me to continue them. Quitting the wall, I resolved to
cross the area of the enclosure. At first I proceeded with extreme caution, for the
floor although seemingly of solid material was treacherous with slime. At length,
however, I took courage and did not hesitate to step firmly — endeavoring to
cross in as direct a line as possible. I had advanced some ten or twelve paces in
this manner, when the remnant of the torn hem of my robe became entangled
between my legs. I stepped on it, and fell violently on my face.

In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immediately apprehend a

somewhat startling circumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and
while I still lay prostrate, arrested my attention. It was this: my chin rested upon
the floor of the prison, but my lips, and the upper portion of my head, although
seemingly at a less elevation than the chin, touched nothing. At the same time,
my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapour, and the peculiar smell of
decayed fungus arose to my nostrils. I put forward my arm, and shuddered to
find that I had fallen at the very brink of a circular pit, whose extent of course I
had no means of ascertaining at the moment. Groping about the masonry just
below the margin, I succeeded in dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into
the abyss. For many seconds I hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed
against the sides of the chasm in its descent; at length there was a sullen plunge
into water, succeeded by loud echoes. At the same moment there came a sound
resembling the quick opening, and as rapid closing of a door overhead, while a
faint gleam of light flashed suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly faded
away.

I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and
congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped. Another
step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more and the death just
avoided was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and
frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny,
there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its
most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering
my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and
6
had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which
awaited me.

Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall — resolving

there to perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination
now pictured many in various positions about the dungeon. In other conditions
of mind I might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one
of these abysses; but now I was the veriest of cowards. Neither could I forget
what I had read of these pits — that the sudden extinction of life formed no part
of their most horrible plan.

Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours; but at length I
again slumbered. Upon arousing, I found by my side, as before, a loaf and a
pitcher of water. A burning thirst consumed me, and I emptied the vessel at a
draught. It must have been drugged, for scarcely had I drunk before I became
irresistibly drowsy. A deep sleep fell upon me — a sleep like that of death. How
long it lasted of course I know not; but when once again I unclosed my eyes the
objects around me were visible. By a wild sulfurous luster, the origin of which I
could not at first determine, I was enabled to see the extent and aspect of the
prison.

In its size I had been greatly mistaken. The whole circuit of its walls did
not exceed twenty-five yards. For some minutes this fact occasioned me a world
of vain trouble; vain indeed — for what could be of less importance, under the
terrible circumstances which environed me than the mere dimensions of my
dungeon? But my soul took a wild interest in trifles, and I busied myself in
endeavors to account for the error I had committed in my measurement. The
truth at length flashed upon me. In my first attempt at exploration I had counted
fifty-two paces up to the period when I fell; I must then have been within a pace
or two of the fragment of serge; in fact I had nearly performed the circuit of the
vault. I then slept, and upon awaking, I must have returned upon my steps, thus
supposing the circuit nearly double what it actually was. My confusion of mind
prevented me from observing that I began my tour with the wall to the left, and
ended it with the wall to the right.
7
 I had been deceived too in respect to the shape of the enclosure. In
feeling my way I had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great
irregularity, so potent is the effect of total darkness upon one arousing from
lethargy or sleep! The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions or
niches at odd intervals. The general shape of the prison was square. What I had
taken for masonry seemed now to be iron, or some other metal in huge plates,
whose sutures or joints occasioned the depression. The entire surface of this
metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to
which the charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends
in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms and other more re- ally fearful images,
overspread and disfigured the walls. I observed that the outlines of these
monstrosities were sufficiently distinct, but that the colours seemed faded and
blurred, as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere. I now noticed the floor,
too, which was of stone. In the centre yawned the circular pit from whose jaws I
had escaped; but it was the only one in the dungeon.

All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort, for my personal condition
had been greatly changed during slumber. I now lay upon my back, and at full
length, on a species of low framework of wood. To this I was securely bound by a
long strap resembling a surcingle. It passed in many convolutions about my limbs
and body, leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm to such extent that I
could by dint of much exertion supply myself with food from an earthen dish
which lay by my side on the floor. I saw to my horror that the pitcher had been
removed. I say to my horror, for I was consumed with intolerable thirst. This
thirst it appeared to be the design of my persecutors to stimulate, for the food in
the dish was meat pungently seasoned.

Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty

or forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its
panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention. It was the painted figure
of Time as he is commonly represented, save that in lieu of a scythe he held what
at a casual glance I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum, such
as we see on antique clocks. There was something, however, in the appearance
of this machine which caused me to regard it more attentively. While I gazed
8
directly upward at it (for its position was immediately over my own), I fancied
that I saw it in motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed. Their
sweeps was brief, and of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat
in fear but more in wonder. Wearied at length with observing its dull movement,
I turned my eyes upon the other objects in the cell.

A slight noise attracted my notice, and looking to the floor, I saw several
enormous rats traversing it. They had issued from the well which lay just within
view to my right. Even then while I gazed, they came up in troops hurriedly, with
ravenous eyes, allured by the scent of the meat. From this it required much
effort and attention to scare them away.

It might have been half-an-hour, perhaps even an hour (for I could take
but imperfect note of time) before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then saw
confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had increased in
extent by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was also much
greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that it had perceptibly
DESCENDED. I now observed, with what horror it is needless to say, that its
nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in
length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as
keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also it seemed massy and heavy, tapering
from the edge into a solid and broad structure above. It was appended to a
weighty rod of brass, and the whole hissed as it swung through the air.

I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity

in torture. My cognizance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial
agents — The Pit, whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as
myself, The Pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule of all
their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of
accidents, and I knew that surprise or entrapment into torment formed an
important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed
to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss, and thus
(there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited me.
Milder! I half smiled in my agony as I thought of such application of such a term.
9
 What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal,
during which I counted the rushing oscillations of the steel! Inch by inch — line
by line — with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages — down
and still down it came! Days passed — it might have been that many days passed
— ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odor of
the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed — I wearied heaven with
my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to
force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell
suddenly calm and lay smiling at the glittering death as a child at some rare
bauble.

There was another interval of utter insensibility; it was brief, for upon
again lapsing into life there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum.
But it might have been long — for I knew there were demons who took note of
my swoon, and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my
recovery, too, I felt very — oh! Inexpressibly — sick and weak, as if through long
inanition. Even amid the agonies of that period the human nature craved food.
With painful effort I outstretched my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and
took possession of the small remnant which had been spared me by the rats. As I
put a portion of it within my lips there rushed to my mind a half-formed thought
of joy — of hope. Yet what business had I with hope? It was, as I say, a half-
formed thought — man has many such, which are never completed. I felt that it
was of joy — of hope; but I felt also that it had perished in its formation. In vain I
struggled to perfect — to regain it. Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my
ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile — an idiot.

The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw

that the crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray the
serge of my robe; it would return and repeat its operations — again — and again.
Notwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more) and the
hissing vigour of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the
fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish;
and at this thought I paused. I dared not go farther than this reflection. I dwelt
upon it with a pertinacity of attention — as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest here
10
the descent of the steel. I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the
crescent as it should pass across the garment — upon the peculiar thrilling
sensation which the friction of cloth produces on the nerves. I pondered upon all
this frivolity until my teeth were on edge.

Down — steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting

its downward with its lateral velocity. To the right — to the left — far and wide —
with the shriek of a damned spirit! To my heart with the stealthy pace of the
tiger! I alternately laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea grew
predominant.

Down — certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated within three inches of

my bosom! I struggled violently — furiously — to free my left arm. This was free
only from the elbow to the hand. I could reach the latter, from the platter beside
me to my mouth with great effort, but no farther. Could I have broken the
fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and attempted to arrest the
pendulum. I might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche!

Down — still unceasingly — still inevitably down! I gasped and struggled

at each vibration. I shrunk convulsively at its very sweep. My eyes followed its
outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair;
they closed themselves spasmodically at the descent, although death would have
been a relief, O, how unspeakable! Still I quivered in every nerve to think how
slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen glistening axe upon
my bosom. It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver — the frame to shrink.
It was hope — the hope that triumphs on the rack — that whispers to the death-
condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.

I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual
contact with my robe, and with this observation there suddenly came over my
spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair. For the first time during many
hours, or perhaps days, I thought. It now occurred to me that the bandage or
surcingle which enveloped me was unique. I was tied by no separate cord. The
first stroke of the razor-like crescent athwart any portion of the band would so
detach it that it might be unwound11 from my person by means of my left hand.
But how fearful, in that case, the proximity of the steel! The result of the slightest
struggle, how deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer
had not foreseen and provided for this possibility! Was it probable that the
bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my
faint, and, as it seemed, my last hope frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to
obtain a distinct view of my breast. The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body
close in all directions save in the path of the destroying crescent.

Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position when
there flashed upon my mind what I cannot better describe than as the unformed
half of that idea of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of which a
moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised food to my
burning lips. The whole thought was now present — feeble, scarcely sane,
scarcely definite, but still entire. I proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of
despair, to attempt its execution.

For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low frame- work upon
which I lay had been literally swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, ravenous,
their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionlessness on my
part to make me their prey. “To what food,” I thought, “have they been
accustomed in the well?”

They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a
small remnant of the contents of the dish. I had fallen into a habitual see-saw or
wave of the hand about the platter; and at length the unconscious uniformity of
the movement deprived it of effect. In their voracity the vermin frequently
fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers. With the particles of the oily and spicy
viand which now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could
reach it; then, raising my hand from the floor, I lay breathlessly still.

At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change —
at the cessation of movement. They shrank alarmedly back; many sought the
well. But this was only for a moment. I had not counted in vain upon their
voracity. Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the boldest
leaped upon the frame-work and smelt12 at the surcingle. This seemed the signal
for a general rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to
the wood, they overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The
measured movement of the pendulum disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its
strokes, they busied
themselves with the anointed
bandage. They pressed, they
swarmed upon me in ever
accumulating heaps. They
writhed upon my throat;
their cold lips sought my
own; I was half stifled by
their thronging pressure;
disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled with
heavy clamminess my heart. Yet one minute and I felt that the struggle would be
over. Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew that in more than
one place it must be already severed. With a more than human resolution I lay
still.

Nor had I erred in my calculations, nor had I endured in vain. I at length

felt that I was free. The surcingle hung in ribands from my body. But the stroke of
the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. It had divided the serge of the
robe. It had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again it swung, and a sharp
sense of pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape had arrived.
At a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultuously away. With a steady
movement, cautious, sidelong, shrinking, and slow, I slid from the embrace of the
bandage and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least I was
free.

Free! And in the grasp of the Inquisition! I had scarcely stepped from my
wooden bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the motion of the
hellish machine ceased and I beheld it drawn up by some invisible force through
the ceiling. This was a lesson which I took desperately to heart. My every motion
was undoubtedly watched. Free! I had but escaped death in one form of agony to
be delivered unto worse than death in some other. With that thought I rolled my
13
eyes nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. Something
unusual — some change which at first I could not appreciate distinctly — it was
obvious had taken place in the apartment. For many minutes of a dreamy and
trembling abstraction I busied myself in vain, unconnected conjecture. During
this period I became aware, for the first time, of the origin of the sulfurous light
which illumined the cell. It proceeded from a fissure about half-an-inch in width
extending entirely around the prison at the base of the walls which thus
appeared, and were completely separated from the floor. I endeavored, but of
course in vain, to look through the aperture.

As I arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the

chamber broke at once upon my understanding. I have observed that although
the outlines of the figures upon the walls were sufficiently distinct, yet the colors
seemed blurred and indefinite. These colors had now assumed, and were
momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that give to the
spectral and fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even firmer
nerves than my own. Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me
in a thousand directions where none had been visible before, and gleamed with
the lurid lustre of a fire that I could not force my imagination to regard as
unreal.

Unreal! — Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of

the vapour of heated iron! A suffocating odour pervaded the prison! A deeper
glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies! A richer tint of
crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted ‘I gasped for
breath! There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors — oh most
unrelenting! Oh, most demoniac of men! I shrank from the glowing metal to the
centre of the cell. Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the
idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like balm. I rushed to its
deadly brink. I threw my straining vision below. The glare from the enkindled
roof illumined its inmost recesses. Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to
comprehend the meaning of what I saw. At length it forced — it wrestled its way
into my soul — it burned itself in upon my shuddering reason. O for a voice to
speak! — Oh, horror! — Oh, any horror but this! With a shriek I rushed from the
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margin and buried my face in my hands — weeping bitterly.

The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as if
with a fit of the ague. There had been a second change in the cell — and now the
change was obviously in the form. As before, it was in vain that I at first
endeavored to appreciate or understand what was taking place. But not long was
I left in doubt. The inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold
escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors. The room
had been square. I saw that two of its iron angles were now acute — two
consequently, obtuse. The fearful difference quickly increased with a low
rumbling or moaning sound. In an instant the apartment had shifted its form into
that of a lozenge. But the alteration stopped not here — I neither hoped nor
desired it to stop. I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment
of eternal peace. “Death,” I said “any death but that of the pit!” Fool! Might I not
have known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
Could I resist its glow? Or if even that, could I withstand its pressure? And now,
flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for
contemplation. Its center, and of course, its greatest width, came just over the
yawning gulf. I shrank back — but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly
onward. At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch
of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of
my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I felt that I
tottered upon the brink — I averted my eyes — there was a discordant hum of
human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh
grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched
arm caught my own as I fell fainting into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle.
The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its
enemies.

THE END

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