“Or hear!” I shuddered. “That dull ‘wash! wash!’ would drive me mad in a week!”
Our little maid reäppeared, all out of breath, brimful of excuses for having left us so long. We were quitting the dungeon when I detected gleams, as of soft eyes, in the darkest corner.
“Mes fleurs!” smiled the girl. “They are safe here from frost and need rest after blooming so well all summer. I bring them in every winter. Would madame like some?”
She clipped and broke until I checked her liberality. The gleams that had caught my eye were large Marguerites, with lissome, white petals, that scarcely discolored in the pressing and drying.
“If they were mine I should rather leave them to the winds and frost than have them winter here!” I said, touching the branches compassionately.
“Plaît-il?” answered the Savoyard, with wide, innocent eyes.
Across the court-yard, upon the ground-floor of another building, is the chamber of torture. This, too, has its memorial pillar, a slender, wooden post in the middle of the room. To this, the prisoner was bound for scourging.
“Sometimes they used whips,” said the guide. “Sometimes,——” she pointed to scorched places on the seasoned wood.
The flesh tingles at sight of these dumb records, burned in upon the memories of Protestants of that day, as they are into the surface of the post. The scourge, in the cases of extreme offenders against ducal and ecclesiastical law, was of fine wire, tipped with red-hot iron or steel. When these missed the back of the victim, they wrote legibly and lastingly upon the pillar of flagellation. There were other “ancient improvements” here once, but they have been removed.
One of note was exhibited in another room,—“the oubliettes,” sometimes called, “the well of promise.” Both names are significant enough. It is an opening in the floor, fenced in with stout rails. Four stone steps slant downward from the brink. The eye cannot pierce the obscurity of the chasm. To the edge of this, then undefended well, the tried and secretly-condemned prisoner was led, blindfolded, and instructed to step down a staircase that would lead him into the outer air and to liberty. The abyss is eighty feet deep. The bottom was set with sharp knives.