Under the Leads | Page 5

too
sensitive nerves, it is that we resemble in this respect the cows and

pigs.
It is probable that just as my overwhelmed soul gave signs of its failing
strength by the loss of the thinking faculty, so my body distilled a great
part of those fluids which by their continual circulation set the thinking
faculty in motion. Thus a sudden shock might cause instantaneous
death, and send one to Paradise by a cut much too short.
In course of time the captain of the men-at-arms came to tell me that he
was under orders to take me under the Leads. Without a word I
followed him. We went by gondola, and after a thousand turnings
among the small canals we got into the Grand Canal, and landed at the
prison quay. After climbing several flights of stairs we crossed a closed
bridge which forms the communication between the prisons and the
Doge's palace, crossing the canal called Rio di Palazzo. On the other
side of this bridge there is a gallery which we traversed. We then
crossed one room, and entered another, where sat an individual in the
dress of a noble, who, after looking fixedly at me, said, "E quello,
mettetelo in deposito:"
This man was the secretary of the Inquisitors, the prudent Dominic
Cavalli, who was apparently ashamed to speak Venetian in my
presence as he pronounced my doom in the Tuscan language.
Messer-Grande then made me over to the warden of The Leads, who
stood by with an enormous bunch of keys, and accompanied by two
guards, made me climb two short flights of stairs, at the top of which
followed a passage and then another gallery, at the end of which he
opened a door, and I found myself in a dirty garret, thirty-six feet long
by twelve broad, badly lighted by a window high up in the roof. I
thought this garret was my prison, but I was mistaken; for, taking an
enormous key, the gaoler opened a thick door lined with iron, three and
a half feet high, with a round hole in the middle, eight inches in
diameter, just as I was looking intently at an iron machine. This
machine was like a horse shoe, an inch thick and about five inches
across from one end to the other. I was thinking what could be the use
to which this horrible instrument was put, when the gaoler said, with a
smile,

"I see, sir, that you wish to know what that is for, and as it happens I
can satisfy your curiosity. When their excellencies give orders that
anyone is to be strangled, he is made to sit down on a stool, the back
turned to this collar, and his head is so placed that the collar goes round
one half of the neck. A silk band, which goes round the other half,
passes through this hole, and the two ends are connected with the axle
of a wheel which is turned by someone until the prisoner gives up the
ghost, for the confessor, God be thanked! never leaves him till he is
dead."
"All this sounds very ingenious, and I should think that it is you who
have the honour of turning the wheel."
He made no answer, and signing to me to enter, which I did by bending
double, he shut me up, and afterwards asked me through the grated hole
what I would like to eat.
"I haven't thought anything about it yet," I answered. And he went
away, locking all the doors carefully behind him.
Stunned with grief, I leant my elbows on the top of the grating. It was
crossed, by six iron bars an inch thick, which formed sixteen square
holes. This opening would have lighted my cell, if a square beam
supporting the roof which joined the wall below the window had not
intercepted what little light came into that horrid garret. After making
the tour of my sad abode, my head lowered, as the cell was not more
than five and a half feet high, I found by groping along that it formed
three-quarters of a square of twelve feet. The fourth quarter was a kind
of recess, which would have held a bed; but there was neither bed, nor
table, nor chair, nor any furniture whatever, except a bucket--the use of
which may be guessed, and a bench fixed in the wall a foot wide and
four feet from the ground. On it I placed my cloak, my fine suit, and
my hat trimmed with Spanish paint and adorned with a beautiful white
feather. The heat was great, and my instinct made me go mechanically
to the grating, the only place where I could lean on my elbows. I could
not see the window, but