Here are the
pulleys by which limbs were broken; the beam, all scorched with the
irons by which feet were burned; the oven where the irons were heated;
and there was the stone where they were sometimes laid to be
strangled, after the torture. On that stone, our guide told us, two
thousand Jews, men, women, and children, had been put to death. There
was also, high up, a strong beam across, where criminals were hung;
and a door, now walled up, by which they were thrown into the lake. I
shivered. "'Twas cruel," she said; "'twas almost as cruel as your
slavery in America."
Then she took us into a tower where was the _oubliette_. Here the
unfortunate prisoner was made to kneel before an image of the Virgin,
while the treacherous floor, falling beneath him, precipitated him
into a well forty feet deep, where he was left to die of broken limbs
and starvation. Below this well was still another pit, filled with
knives, into which, when they were disposed to a merciful hastening of
the torture, they let him fall. The woman has been herself to the
bottom of the first dungeon, and found there bones of victims. The
second pit is now walled up.
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