"Ah!" replied the king, looking at it more closely.
There was something of everything in this chamber—pitchers and wooden horses for the torture by water; wedges and mallets for the torture of the boot; besides stone benches nearly all around the room for the wretches who awaited the torture. Above these benches, at the seats themselves, and at their feet, were iron rings fastened into the walls, without other symmetry than that of the torturing art. But their proximity to the seats sufficiently indicated that they were there in order to await the limbs of those who were to occupy them.
Henry walked on without a word, but not a single detail of all the hideous apparatus which, so to speak, had stamped the history of suffering on the walls escaped him.
The king was so taken up with the objects about him that he forgot to look where he was going, and came to a sudden standstill.
"Ah!" said he, "what is that?"
And he pointed to a kind of ditch dug in the damp pavement which formed the floor.
"That is the gutter, sire."
"Does it rain here, then?"
"Yes, sire, blood."
"Ah!" said Henry, "very good. Shall we not soon reach my apartment?"