Passing through the courtyard, 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 courtyard is a dungeon--we stood within it, in another minute--in the
dismal tower of 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.
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