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THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM
Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores
Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.
Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.
[Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected
upon the site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris.]
I WAS sick--sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at
length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses
were leaving me. The sentence--the dread sentence of death--was the last
of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of
the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate
hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution--perhaps from its
association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel. This only for a
brief period; for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw;
but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed
judges. They appeared to me white--whiter than the sheet upon which
I trace these words--and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the
intensity of their expression of firmness--of immoveable resolution--of
stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me
was Fate, were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with
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