I expressed myself obliged
by his care, and begged his acceptance of a further remuneration,
which I tendered, and which was eagerly accepted. The way was now
cleared--there is no hell to which a golden branch will not win your
admittance.

"The man detained me no longer; he hastened to lead the way. We passed
through various long passages; sometimes the low moan of pain and
weakness came upon my ear--sometimes the confused murmur of the idiot's
drivelling soliloquy. From one passage, at right angles with the one
through which we proceeded, came a fierce and thrilling shriek; it sunk
at once into silence--perhaps by the lash!

"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 wa