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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

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