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importance, under the terrible circumstances which environed me, then
the mere dimensions of my dungeon? But my soul took a wild interest in
trifles, and I busied myself in endeavors to account for the error I had
committed in my measurement. The truth at length flashed upon me. In my
first attempt at exploration I had counted fifty-two paces, up to the
period when I fell; I must then have been within a pace or two of the
fragment of serge; in fact, I had nearly performed the circuit of the
vault. I then slept, and upon awaking, I must have returned upon my
steps--thus supposing the circuit nearly double what it actually was. My
confusion of mind prevented me from observing that I began my tour with
the wall to the left, and ended it with the wall to the right.
I had been deceived, too, in respect to the shape of the enclosure.
In feeling my way I had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of
great irregularity; so potent is the effect of total darkness upon one
arousing from lethargy or sleep! The angles were simply those of a few
slight depressions, or niches, at odd intervals. The general shape of
the prison was square. What I had taken for masonry seemed now to be
iron, or some other metal, in huge plates, whose sutures or joints
occasioned the depression. The entire surface of this metallic enclosure
was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which the
charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends
in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms, and other more really
fearful images, overspread and disfigured the walls. I observed that the
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