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: now shrieked as if she were on the rack herself; and had a
mysterious, hag-like way with her forefinger, when approaching the
remains of some new horror--looking back and walking stealthily,
and making horrible grimaces--that might alone have qualified her
to walk up 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 glance, over his shoulder, at Goblin's keen
eye, shows Monsieur--and would without the aid of the directing
key--where they are. 'What are they?' 'Blood!'
In October, 1791, when the Revolution was at its height here, sixty
persons: men and women ('and priests,' says Goblin, 'priests'):
were murdered, and hurled, the dying and the dead, into this
dreadful pit, where a quantity of quick-lime was tumbled down upon
their bodies.
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