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 ribands
      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—cautious, sidelong,
      shrinking, and slow—I slid from the embrace of the bandage and
      beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least, I was
      free. Free!—and in the grasp 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 heart. 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 eves nervously around on the barriers of
      iron that hemmed me in. Something unusual—some change which, at
      first, I could not appreciate distinctly—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 unreal. _Unreal!_—Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the
      breath of the vapour of heated iron! A suffocating odour pervaded
      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 centre 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, endeavoured 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 acute—two, consequently, obtuse. The fearful
      difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or moaning
      sound. In an instant the apartment had shifted its form into 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 have not known 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 centre, 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 longer 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 despair. 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. THE PREMATURE BURIAL


      There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing,
      but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of
      legitimate fiction. These the mere romanticist must eschew, if he
      do not wish to offend or to disgust. They are with propriety
      handled only when the severity and majesty of Truth sanctify and
      sustain them. We thrill, for example, with the most intense of
      “pleasurable pain” over the accounts of the Passage of the
      Beresina, of the Earthquake at Lisbon, of the Plague at London,
      of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or of the stifling of the
      hundred and twenty-three prisoners in the Black Hole at Calcutta. But in these accounts it is the fact——it is the reality——it is
      the history which excites. As inventions, we should regard them
      with simple abhorrence.