But We Neither Went There, To See State Rooms,
Nor Soldiers' Quarters, Nor A Common Jail, Though We Dropped Some
Money Into A Prisoners' Box Outside, Whilst The Prisoners,
Themselves, Looked Through The Iron Bars, High Up, And Watched Us
Eagerly.
We went to see the ruins of the dreadful rooms in which
the Inquisition used to sit.
A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black eyes,--
proof that the world hadn't conjured down the devil within her,
though it had had between sixty and seventy years to do it in,--
came out of the Barrack Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with
some large keys in her hands, and marshalled us the way that we
should go. How she told us, on the way, that she was a Government
Officer (concierge du palais a apostolique), and had been, for I
don't know how many years; and how she had shown these dungeons to
princes; and how she was the best of dungeon demonstrators; and how
she had resided in the palace from an infant,--had been born there,
if I recollect right,--I needn't relate. But such a fierce,
little, rapid, sparkling, energetic she-devil I never beheld. She
was alight and flaming, all the time. Her action was violent in
the extreme. She never spoke, without stopping expressly for the
purpose. She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung
herself into attitudes, hammered against walls with her keys, for
mere emphasis: now whispered as if the Inquisition were there
still:
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