Pictures From Italy | Page 9

and
down a sick man's counterpane, to the exclusion of all other figures,
through a whole fever.
Passing through the court-yard, among groups of idle soldiers, we
turned off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our admission,
and locked again behind us: and entered a narrow court, rendered
narrower by fallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it choking up
the mouth of a ruined subterranean passage, that once communicated
(or is said to have done so) with another castle on the opposite bank of
the river. Close to this court-yard is a dungeon--we stood within it, in
another minute--in the dismal tower des oubliettes, where Rienzi was
imprisoned, fastened by an iron chain to the very wall that stands there
now, but shut out from the sky which now looks down into it. A few
steps brought us to the Cachots, in which the prisoners of the
Inquisition were confined for forty-eight hours after their capture,
without food or drink, that their constancy might be shaken, even
before they were confronted with their gloomy judges. The day has not
got in there yet. They are still small cells, shut in by four unyielding,
close, hard walls; still profoundly dark; still massively doored and
fastened, as of old.
Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into a vaulted
chamber, now used as a store-room: once the chapel of the Holy Office.
The place where the tribunal sat, was plain. The platform might have
been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good
Samaritan having been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition
chambers! But it was, and may be traced there yet.
High up in the jealous wall, are niches where the faltering replies of the

accused were heard and noted down. Many of them had been brought
out of the very cell we had just looked into, so awfully; along the same
stone passage. We had trodden in their very footsteps.
I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when
Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the
handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her.
I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining--a rugged room, with a
funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright day. I ask
her what it is. She folds her arms, leers hideously, and stares. I ask
again. She glances round, to see that all the little company are there;
sits down upon a mound of stones; throws up her arms, and yells out,
like a fiend, 'La Salle de la Question!'
The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was made of that shape to stifle
the victim's cries! Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile, in
silence. Peace, Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short
legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame out
again.
Minutes! Seconds are not marked upon the Palace clock, when, with
her eyes flashing fire, Goblin is up, in the middle of the chamber,
describing, with her sunburnt arms, a wheel of heavy blows. Thus it ran
round! cries Goblin. Mash, mash, mash! An endless routine of heavy
hammers. Mash, mash, mash! upon the sufferer's limbs. See the stone
trough! says Goblin. For the water torture! Gurgle, swill, bloat, burst,
for the Redeemer's honour! Suck the bloody rag, deep down into your
unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath you draw! And when the
executioner plucks it out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of God's
own Image, know us for His chosen servants, true believers in the
Sermon on the Mount, elect disciples of Him who never did a miracle
but to heal: who never struck a man with palsy, blindness, deafness,
dumbness, madness, any one affliction of mankind; and never stretched
His blessed hand out, but to give relief and ease!
See! cries Goblin. There the furnace was. There they made the irons
red-hot. Those holes supported the sharp stake, on which the tortured
persons hung poised: dangling with their whole weight from the roof.

'But;' and Goblin whispers this; 'Monsieur has heard of this tower? Yes?
Let Monsieur look down, then!'
A cold air, laden with an earthy smell, falls upon the face of Monsieur;
for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in the wall. Monsieur
looks in. Downward to the bottom, upward to the top, of a steep, dark,
lofty tower: very dismal, very dark, very cold. The Executioner of the
Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her head to look down also, flung
those who were past all further torturing, down here. 'But look! does
Monsieur see the black stains on the wall?' A