"We were now in a different department of the building--all was silence--
hushed deep--breathless: this seemed to me more awful than the terrible
sounds I had just heard. My guide went slowly on, sometimes breaking the
stillness of the dim gallery by the jingle of his keys--sometimes by a
muttered panegyric on himself and his humanity. I neither heeded nor
answered him.

"We read in the annals of the Inquisition, of every limb, nerve, sinew of
the victim, being so nicely and accurately strained to their utmost, that
the frame would not bear the additional screwing of a single hair
breadth. Such seemed my state. We came to a small door, at the right
hand; it was the last but one in the passage. We paused before it.
'Stop,' said I, 'for one moment:' and I was so faint and sick at heart,
that I leaned against the wall to recover myself, before I let him open
the door: when he did, it was a greater relief than I can express, to see
that all was utterly dark. 'Wait, Sir,' said the guide, as he entered;
and a sullen noise told me that he was unbarring the heavy shutter.

"Slowly the grey cold light of the morning broke in: a dark figure was
stretched upon a wretched bed, at the far end of the room. She raised
herself at the sound. She turned her face towards me; I did not fall, nor
faint, nor shriek; I stood motionless, as if fixed into stone; and yet it
was Gertrude upon whom I gazed! Oh, Heaven! who but myself could have
recognized her? Her cheek was as the cheek of the dead--the hueless skin
clung to the bone--the eye was dull and glassy for one moment, the next
it became terribly and preternaturally bright--but not with the ray of
intellect, or consciousness, or recognition. She looked long and hard at
me; a voice, hollow and broken, but which still penetrated my heart, came
forth through the wan lips, that scarcely moved with the exertion. 'I am
very cold,' it said--'but if I complain, you will beat me.' She fell down