World of Education/World of Education.iso/world_p/pit_pen.zip/PIT_PEN.TXT

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The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe ,First Published 1843

                       The Pit and the Pendulum

        I was sick--sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at
length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were
leaving me.  The sentence--the dread sentence of death--was the last of distinct
accentuations which reached my ears.  After that, the sound of the inquistorial
voice seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum.  It conveyed to my soul the
idea of revolution, perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a
millwheel.  This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more.  Yet,
for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exageration!  I saw the lips of the
black-robed judges.  They appeared to me white, whiter than the sheet upon which
I trace these words, and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of
their expression of firmness,--of immovable resolution, of stern contempt of
human torture.  I saw that the decrees of what to my was Fate were still issuing
from those lips.  I saw them writhe with a deadly locution.  I saw them fashion
the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no sound succeeded.  I saw,
too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible
waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment.  And
then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table.  At first they
wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angles who would save me;
but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I
felt every fiber in my fram thrill as if I thouched the wire of galvanic
battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame,
and I saw that from them there would be no help.  And then there stole into my
fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in
the grave.  The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it
attained full appreciationl but just as my spirit came at length properly to
feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from
before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out
utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed
up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades.  Then silence, and
stillness, and night were the universe.
        I had swoonedl but still will not say that all of consciousness was
lost.  What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to
describe; yet all was not lost.  In the deepnest slumber--no!  In delirium--no!
In a swoon--no!  In death--no! even in the grave all is not lost.  Else there is
no immortality for man.  Arousing from the most porfound of slumbers, we break
the gossamer web of some dream.  yet in a second afterward (so frail may that eb
have been) we remember not that we have dreamed.  In the return to life from teh
swoon there are two stages: first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual,
secondly, that of the sense of physical, existence.  It seems probable that if,
upon reaching the second stage, we could recall the impressions of the first, we
should find these impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyong.  And that
gulf is--what?  How at lease shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the
tomb?  But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage are not at
will recalled, yet, after a long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we
marvel whence they come?  He who has never swooned is not he who finds strange
palaces and wildly familir faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds
floating in mid-air the sad visions that many may not view; is not he who
ponders over the perfume of some novel flower; is not he whose brain grows
bewildered with the meaning of some musical candence which has never before
arrested his attention.
        Amid frequent and thouughtful endeavors to remember, amid earnest
struggles to regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which
my souuld had lapsed, there have been moments when I have dreamed of success;
there have been brief, very brieg periods when I have conjured up remembrances
which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only
to that condition of seeming unconsciousness.  These shadows of memory tell,
indistinctly, of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence
down--down--still down--till a hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea
of the interminableness of the descent.  They tell also of a vague horror at my
heart, on account of that heart's unnatural stillness.  Then comes a sense of
sudden motionlessness throughout all things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly
train!) had outrun in their descent the limits of the limitless, and paused from
the wearisomeness of their toil.  After this I call to mind flatness and
dampness; and then all is madness--the madness of a memory which busies itself
among forbidden things.
        Very suddenly there came back to my sould motion and sound--the
tumultous motion of the heart, and, is my ears, the sound of its beating.  Then
a pause in which all is blank.  Then again sound, and motion, and touch--a
tingling sensation pervading my frame.  Then the mere consciousness of
existence, without thought--a condition which lasted long.  Then, very suddenly,
thought, and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavor to comprehend my true
state.  Then a strong desire to lapse into insensibility.  Then a rushing
revival of soul and a successful effort to move.  And now a full memory of the
trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of the sentence, of the sickness,
of the swoon.  Then entire forgetfulness of all that followed; of all that a
later day and much earnestness of endeavor have enabled me vaguely to recall.
        So far, I had not opened my eyes.  I felt that I lay upon my back,
unbound.  I reached out my hand, and it fell heavily upon something damp ad
hard.  There I suffered it to remain for many minutes, while I strove to imagine
where and what I could be.  I longed yet dared not to employ my vision.  I
dreaded the first glance at objects around me.  It was not that I feared to look
upon things horrible, but that I grew aghast lest there should be nothing to
see.  At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes.
My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed.  The blackness of eternal night
encompassed me.  I struggled for breath.  The intensity of the darkness seemed
to oppress and stifle me.  The atmosphere was intorlerably close.  I still lay
quitely, and made effort to exercise my reason.  I brought to mind the
inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real
condition.  The sentence had passed; and it appeared to me that a very long time
had since elapsed.  Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself actually dead.
Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction, is altogether
inconsistent with real existence;--but where is what state was I?  The condemned
to death, I knew, perished usually at the autos-da-fe, and one of these had been
held on the very night of the day of my trail.  Had I been remanded to my
dungeon, to await the next sacrifice, whihc would not take place for many
months?  This I at once saw could not be.  Victims had been in immediate demand.
Moreover, my dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at Toledo, had stone
floors, and light was not altogether excluded.
        A fearful idea not suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my hear,
and for a brief period I once more relapsed into insensibility.  Upon
recovering, I at once started to my feet, trembling convusively in every fiber.
I thrust my arms widly above and around me in all directions.  I felt nothing;
yet dreaded to move a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a tomb.
Perspiration burst from every pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my
forehead.  The agony of suspense grew at length intolerable, and I cautiously
moved forward, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining from their sockets,
in the hope of catching some faint ray of light.  I proceeded for many paces;
but still all was blackness and vacancy.  I breathed more freely.  It seemed
evident that mine was not, at least, the most hideous of fates.
        And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came
thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo.
Of the dungeons there had been strange thing narrated--fables I had always
deemed them--but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper.  Was
I lef to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what
fate, perhaps even more fearful, awaited me?  That the result would be death,
and a death of more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of
my judges to doubt.  The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted
me.
        My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction.  It
was a will, seemingly of stone masonry--very smooth, slimy, and cold.  I
followed it up; stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain
antique narratives had inspired me.  This process, however, afforded my on means
of ascertaining the dimensions of my dungeon; as I might make its circuit, and
return to the point whence I set out, without being aware of the fact, so
perfectly uniform seemed the wall.  I therefore sought the knife which has been
in my pocket when led into the inquisitorial chamber; but it was gone; my
clothes had been exchanged for a wrapper of coarse serge.  I had thought of
forcing the blade in some minute crevice of the masonry, so as to identify my
point of departure.  The difficulty, nevertheless, was but trivial; although, in
the disorder of my fancy, it seemed at first insuperable.  I tore a part of the
hem from the robe and placed the fragment at full length, and at right angles to
the wall.  In groping my way around the prison I could not fail to encounter
this rag upon completing the circuit.  So, at least, I thought; but I had not
counted upon the extent of the dungeon, or upon my own weakness.  The ground was
moist and slippery.  I staggered onward for some time, when I stumbled and fell.
My excessive fatigue induced me to remain prostrate; and sleep soon overtook me
as I lay.
        Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and
a pitcher with water.  I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this
circumstance, but ate and drank with avidity.  Shortly afterward, I resumed my
tour around the prison, and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the
serge.  Up to the period when I fell, I had counted fifty-two paces, and, upon
resuming my walk, I had counted forty-eight more--when I arrived at the rag.
There were in all, then, a hundren paces; and, admitting two paces to the yard,
I presumed the dungeon to be fifty yards in circuit.  I had met, however, with
many angles in the wall, and thus I could form no guess at the shapre of the
vault; for vault I could not help supposing it to be.
        I had little object--certainly no hope--in these researches but a vague
curiosity prompted me to continue them.  Quitting the wall, I resolved to cross
the area of the enclosure.  At first, I proceeded with extreme caution, for the
floor although seemingly of solid material, was treacherous with slime.  At
length, however, I took courage, and did not hesitate to step
firmly--endeavoring to cross in as direct a line as possible.  I had advanced
some ten or twelve paces in this manned, when the remnant of the torn hem of my
robe became entangled between my legs.  I stepped on it and fell violently on my
face.
        In the confusion attending my fall,  I did not immediately apprehend a
somewhat startling circumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and
while I still lay prostrate, arrested my attention.  I twas this: my chin rested
upon the floor of the prison, but my lips and the upper portion of my head,
although seemingly at a less elevation than the chin, touched nothing.  At the
same time, my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, and the peculiar smell
of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils.  I put forward my arm, and shuddered to
find that I had fallen at the very brink of a circular pit, whose extent, of
course, I had not means of ascertaining at the moment.  Groping about the
masonry just below the margin, I succeeded in dislodging a small fragment, and
let it fall into the abyss.  For many seconds I hearkened to its reverberations
as it dashed against the sides of the chasm in its descent; at length, there was
a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by loud echoes.  At the same moment there
came a sound resembling the quick opening and as rapid closing of a door
overhead, while a faint gleam of light flashed suddenly through the gloom, and
as suddenly faded away.
        I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated
myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped.  Another step before my
fall, and the world had seen me no more.  And the death just ovioded was of that
very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales
respecting the Inquisition.  To the victims of its tyranny there was the choice
of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral
horrors.  I had been reserved for the latter.  By long suffering my nerves had
been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in
every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me.
        Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall-resolving there
to perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now
pictured many in various positions about the dungeon.  In other conditions of
mind, I might have had the courage to end my misery at once, by a plunge inot
one of these abysses; but now I was the veriest of cowards.  Neither could I
forget what I had read of these pits--that the sudden extinction of life formed
no port of their most horrible plan.
        Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours; but at length I
again slumbered.  Upon arousing, I found by my side, as before, a loaf and a
pitcher of water.  A burning thirst consumed me, and I emptied the vessel at a
draught.  I must have been drugged--for scarcely had I drunk, before I became
irresistibly drowsy.  A deep sleep fell upon me--a sleep like that of death.
How long it lasted, of course I knew not; but, when once again I unclosed my
eyes, the objects around me were visible.  By a wild, sulphurous luster, the
origin of which I could not at first determine, I was enabled to see the extent
and aspect of the prison.
        In its size I had been greatly mistaken.  The whole circuit of its walls
did not exceed twenty-five yards.  For some minutes this fact occasioned me a
world of vain trouble, under the terrible circumstances which environed me, than
the mere dimensions of my dungeon?  But my souuld took a wild interest in
trifles, and I busied myself in endeavors to account for the error I had
committed in my measurement.  The truth at length flashed upon me.  I my first
attempt at exploration I had counted fifty-two paces, up to the period when I
fell: I must then have been within a pace or two of the fragment of serge; in
fact, I had nearly performed the circuit of the vault.  I then slept--and, upon
awaking, I must have returned upon my steps, thus supposing the circuit nearly
double what it actually was.  My confusion of mind prevented me from observing
that I began my tour with the wall to the left, and ended it with the wall to
the right.
        I had been deceived, too, in respect, to the shape of the enclosure.  In
feeling my way, I had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great
irregularity; so potent is the effoect of total darkness upon one arousing from
lethargy or sleep!  The angles were simply those of a few slught depressions, or
niches, at odd intervals.  The general shape of the prison was square.  What I
had takes for masonry, seemded now to be iron, or some other metal, in huge
plates, whose sutures of joints occasioned the depression.  The entire surface
of the metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive
devices to which the charnel superstition of the monks has given rise.  The
figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms, and other more
really fearful images, overspread and disfigured the walls.  I observed that the
outlines of these monstrosities were sufficiently distincy, but that the colors
seemed faded and blurred, as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere.  I now
noticed the floor, too, which was of stone.  In the centre yawned the circular
pit from whose jaws I had escaped; but it was the only one in the dungeon.
        All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort, for my personal
condition had been greatly changed during slumber.  I now lay upon my back, and
at full length, on a species of low framework of wood.  To this I was securely
bound by a long strap resembling a surcingle.  It passed in many convolutions
about my limbs and body, leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm to
such extent that I could, by dint of much exertion, supply myself with food from
an earthen dish which lay by my side on the floor.  I saw, to my horror--fir I
was consumed with intolerable thirst.  This thirst it appeared to be the design
of my persecutors to stimulate, for the food in the dish was meat pungently
seasoned.
        Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison.  It was some thirty
or forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls.  In one of its
panells a very singular figure riveted my whole attention.  It was the painted
figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that, in lieu of a scythe, he
held what, at a casual glance, I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge
pendulum, such as we see on antique clocks.  There was something, however, in
the appearence of this machine which caused me to regard it more attentively.
While I gazed directly upward at it, (for its position was immediately over my
own,) I fancied that I was it in motion.  In an instant afterward the fancy was
confirmed.  Its sweep was brief, and of course slow.  I watched it for some
minutes, somewhat in fear, but more in wonder.  Wearied at length with obsercing
its dull movement, I turned my eyes only the other object in the cell.
        A slight noise attracted my notice, and, looking to the floor, I saw
several enormous rats traversing it.  They had issued from the well, which lay
just within view to my right.  Even then, while I gazed, they came up in troops,
hurriedly, with ravenous eyes, allured by the scent of the meat.  From this is
required much effort and attention to scare them away.
        It might have been half an hour, perhaps even an hour, (for I could take
but imperfect note of time) before I again cast my eyes upward.  What I then
saw, confounded and amazed me.  The sweep of the pendulum had increased in
extent by nearly a yard.  As a natural consequence, its velocity was also much
greater.  But what mainly disturbed me, was the idea that it had perceptibly
descended.  I now observed--with what horror it is needless to say--that its
nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in
length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen
as that of a razor.  Like a razor also, it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from
the edge into a solid and broad structure above.  It was appended to a weighty
rod of brass, and the whole hissed as it swung through the air.
        I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monksih ingenuity in
torture.  My cognizance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial
agents--the pit, whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as
myself--the pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule of
all their punishments.  The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of
accidents, and I knew that surprise, or entrapment into torment, formed an
important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths.  Having
failed to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss; and
thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited
me.  Milder!  I half smiled in my agony as I thought of such application of such
a term.
        What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than
mortal, during which I counted the rushing oscillations of the steel!  Inch by
inch--line by line--with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed
ages--down and still down it came!  Days passed--it might have been that many
days passed--ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath.
The odor of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils.  I prayed--I wearied
heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent.  I grew frantically mad, and
struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful cimeter.  And
then I fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child
at some rare bawble.
        There was another interval of utter insensibility; it was brief; for,
upon again lapsing into life, there had been no perceptible descent in the
pendulum.  But it might have been long; for I knew there were demons who took
note of my swoon and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure.  Upon my
recovery, too, I felt very--oh, inexprssibly--sick adn weak, as if through long
inanition.  Even amid the agonies of that period the human nature craved food.
With painful effort I outstretched my left arm as for as my bonds permitted, and
took possession of the small remnant which had been spared my by the rats.  As I
put a portion of it within my lips, there rushed to my mind a half-formed though
of joy--of hipe.  Yet what business had I with hoe?  It was, as I say, a
half-formed though: man has many such, which are never completed.  I felt that
it was of joy--of hipe; but I felt also that it had perished in its formation.
In vain I struggled to perfect--to regain it.  Long suffering had nearly
annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind.  I was an imbecile--an idiot.
        The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my lenght.  I saw
that the crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart.  It would fray
the serge of my robe--it would return and repeat its operations--again--and
again.  Nothwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more)
and the hissing vigor of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of
iron, still the fraying of my robe wouuld be all that, for several minutes, it
would accomplish.  And at this thought I paused.  I darned not go farther than
this reflection.  I dwelt uponit with a pertinacity of attention--as if in so
dwelling, I could arrest here the descent of the steel.  I forced myself to
ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should pass across the garment--upon
the peculiar thrilling sensation which the friction of cloth produces on the
nerves.  I pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were on edge.
        Down--steadily down it crept.  I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting
its downward with its lateral velocity.  To the right--to the left--far and
wide--with the shriek of a damned spirit! to my heart, with the stealthy pace of
the tiger!  I alternately laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea grew
predominant.
        Down--certainly, relentlessly down!  It vibrated within three inches of
my bosom!  I struggled violently--furiously--to free my left arm.  This was free
only from the elbow to the hand.  I could reach the latter from the platter
beside me to my mouth, with great effort, but no farther.  Could I have broken
the fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and attempted to arrest the
pendulum.  I might as well have attempted to arrest an avalenche!
        Down--still unceasingly--still inevitably down!  I gasped and struggled
at each vibration.  I shrunk convulsively at its every sweep.  My eyes followed
its outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeanig despair;
they closed themselves spasmodically at the descent, although death would have
been a relief, oh, how unspeakable!  Still I quivered in every nerve to think
how slight a sinking of the machinery would percipitate that keen, glistening
axe upon my bosom.  It was hipe that prompted the nerve to quiver--the frame to
shrink.  It was hope--the hope that triumphs on teh rack--that whispers to the
death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.
        I saw that some ten or twelve viberations wouuld bring the steel in
actual contact with my robe; and with this observation there suddenly camve ocer
my spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair.  For the first time
during many hours--or perhaps days--I thought.  It now occurred to me, that the
bandage, or surcingle, which enveloped me, was unique.  I was tied by no
separate cord.  The first stroke of the razor-like cresecent athwart any portion
of the band would so detach it that it might be unwound from my person by means
of my left hand.  But how fearful, in that case, the proxumity of the steel!
The result of the slightest struggle, how deadly!  Was it likely, moreover, that
the minions of the torturer had not foreseen and provided for this possibility?
Was it probable that the bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum?
Dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed, my last hope frustrated, I so far
elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my breast.  The surcingle
enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions--save in the path of the
destroying crescent.
        Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position, when
there flashed upon my mind what I cannot better describe than as the informed
half of that idea of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of
which a moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised food
to my burning lips.  The whole thought was now present--feeble, scarcely sane,
scarcely definite--but still entire.  I proceeded at once, with the nervous
energy of despair, to attempt its execution.
        For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which I
lay, had been literally swarming with rats.  They were wild, bold,
ravenous--their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited but for
motionlessness on my part to make me their prey.  ``To what food,'' I thought,
``have they been accustomed in the well?''
        They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a
small remnant of the contents of the dish.  I had fallen into a habitual
see-saw, or wave of the hand about the platter; and, at length, the unconscious
uniformity of the movement deprived it of effect.  In their voracity the vermin
frequently fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers.  With the particles of oily
and spicy viand which now remained I thoroughly rubbed and bandage whereever I
could reach it; then raising my hand from, the floor, I lay breathless still.
        At first, the ravenous animals were stratled and terrified at the
change--at the cessation of movement.  They shrank alarmedly back; many sought
the well.  But this was only for a moment.  I had not counted in vain upon their
voracity.  Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the boldest
leaped upon the framework, and smelt at the surcingle.  This seemed the signal
for a general rush.  Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troop.  They
clung to the wood--they overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person.  The
measured movement of the pendulum disturbed them not at all.  Avoiding its
strokes, they busied themselves with the anointed bandage.  They pressed--they
swarmed upon me in ever accumulation heaps.  They writhed upon my throat; their
cold lips sought my own; I was half stifled by theur thronging pressure;
disgust, for which the world had no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a
heavy clamminess, my hear.  Yet one minute, and I felt that the struggle would
be over.  Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage.  I knew that in more
that one place it must be already severed.  With a more than human resolution I
lay still.
        Nor had I erred in my calculations--nor had I endured in vain.  I at
length felt that I was free.  The surcingle hung in ribbons from my body.  But
the stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom.  It had divided the
serge of the robe.  It had cut through the linen beneath.  Twice again it swung,
and a sharp sense of pain shot through every nerve.  But the moment of escape
had arrived.  At a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultuously away.
With a steady movement--cautions, sidelong, shrinking, and slow--I slid from the
embrace of the bandage and beyong the reach of the cimeter.  For the moment, at
lease, I was free.
        Free!--and in the graso of the Inquisition!  I had scarcely stepped from
my wooden bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the motion of
the hellish machine ceased, and I beheld it drawn up, by some invisible force,
through the ceiling.  This was a lesson which I took desperately to my heard.
My every motion was undoubtedly watched.  Free!--I had but escaped death in one
form of agony to be delivered unto worse than death in some other.  With that
thought I rolled my eyes nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me
in.  Something unusual--it was obvious, had taken place in the apartment.  For
many minutes of a dreamy and trembling abstraction I busied myself in vain,
unconnected conjecture.  During this period, I became aware, for the first time,
of the origin of the sulphurous light which illumined the cell.  It proceeded
from a fissure, about half an inch in width, extending entirely around the
prison at the base of the walls, which thus appeared and were completely
separated from the floor.  I endeavored, but of course in vain, to look through
the aperture.
        As I arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the
chamber broke at once upon my understanding.  I have observed that, although the
outlines of the figures upon the walls were sufficiently distinct, yet the
colors seemed blurred and indefinite.  These colors had now assumed, and were
momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that gave to the
spectral and fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even
firmer nerves than my own.  Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared
upon me in a thousand directions, where none had been visible before, and
gleamed with the lurid lustre of a fire that I could not force my imagination to
regard as unreak.
        Unreal!--Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of
the vappor of heated iron!  A suffocating odor prevaded the prison!  A deeper
glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies!  A richer tint
of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood.  I panted!  I
gasped for breath!  There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors--oh,
most unrelenting! oh, most demoniac of men!  I shrank from the glowing metal to
the center of the cell.  Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that
impended, the idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like balm.  I
rushed to its deadly brink.  I threw my straining vision below.  The glare from
the enkindled roof illumined its inmost recesses.  Yet, for a wild moment, did
my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning of what I saw.  At length it
forced--it wrestled its way into my soul--it burned itself in upon my shuddering
reason.  Oh, for a voice to speak!--oh, horror!--oh, any horror but this!  With
a shriek, I rushed from the margin, and buried my face in my hands--weeping
bitterly.
        The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as
with a fit of the ague.  There had been a second change in the cell--and now the
change was obviously in the form.  As before, it was in vain that I at first
endeavored to appreciate or understand what was taking place.  But not long was
I left in doubt.  The Inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold
escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors.  The room
had been square.  I saw that two of its iron angles were now acure--two,
consequently, obtuse.  The fearfuul difference quickly increased with a low
rumbling or moaning sound.  It an instant the apartment had shifted its form int
that of a lozenge.  But the alteration stopped not here--I neither hoped nor
desired it to stop.  I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment
of eternal peace.  ``Death,'' I said, ``any death but that of the pit!''  Fool~
might I not have know that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to
urge me?  Could I resist its glow?  or if even that, could I withstand its
pressure?  And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that
left me no time for contemplation.  Its center, and, of course, its greatest
width, came just over the yawning gulf.  I shrank back--but the closing walls
pressed me resistlessly onward.  At length for my seared and writhing body there
was no long an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison.  I struggled no
more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of
despait.  I felt that I tottered upon the brink--I averted my eyes--
        There was a discordant hum of human voices!  There was a loud blast as
of many trumpets!  There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders!  The
fiery walls rushed back!  An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting,
into the abyss.  It was that of General Lasalle.  The French army had entered
Toledo.  The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.