Keet said his prayers, which he generally does on any painful ascent, and with the pathos of an old Greenwich Pensioner, blessed the steps, the brambles, and the hard stumps that annoyed him. He also performed sundry pious ejaculations to the tyrannical lords of the ancient domain, wishing them in the “abodes of bliss,” with a fervor and pathos truly marvellous. At last, we were shown, amid ruins, a low-browed, dark, shaggy, doleful, savage, ugly-looking archway, at which Keet curled the hair of his upper lip, as did Don Quixote when about to attack the Fulling Mills; while I, like Sancho, stood by, opening the sandwich-box, and the little bottle of very weak liquor, called water, which Keet eyed with great jealousy. We had a fierce-looking man as a guide, with a great black beard, clod-hopping shoes, a long pole with a spike in it—and he had lost his nose, one eye, and all his front teeth! When we came to this ugly-looking gateway, our guide, whom Keet called “Ferocio,” knocked with his spike-stick at the thick walls of the building, and cried out in mournful accents,—“This is the great gigantic gateway of the powerful, puissant, and portentious Castle of Baden; where men were strangled, women were pressed to death, and children were done for in a most sanguinary, blood-thirsty, and barbarous manner. Behold,” said he, in continuation, “the frowning granite that seems to yawn upon you with the sleep of seven centuries. Within these blocks of stone, was the famous ever-to-be-remembered, and never-to-be-forgotten secret tribunal; below it are the secret chambers, the secret prisons, the secret dungeons, and the secret horrors of this unsatisfactory pile of buildings; but, come my friendships, we will go to the within port, and there you shall see all the horrors of the dungeons as it appears by the light of the flambeau. You would like to see the dungeons!—Gents?”
To this appellation we gave the most profound of bows, as much like the obeisances of a “gent” of any of the seven drapers’ establishments as we could assume. “Now, gents!” said the guide, “elevate the lids of your desiring eyes, and follow me.” We did so, till we came to a low portal gate, hedged round with ruins—dark, damp, and nauseous. “Stand here, gents,” said the guide, with a fierce aspect and a menacing tone; “stand here and contemplate, while I fetches the key.” After keeping us waiting for a short time, he returned, holding in his hand a gigantic key, which, having brandished with a mysterious air for some seconds, he put into the lock—the old door grated on its hinges, and at last stood open. He then looked at us sternly, and with the accents of Hamlet’s Ghost, said in a hollow voice, “Follow me!”
Keet pulled out his “cheese-toaster,” and having deliberately sharpened it on the stone door-posts, and brandished it as “Ferocio” did the key, he gave me an expressive leer, and we followed. When we got into the door-way, we perceived the passage to be very dark, but we followed—took a turning to the right and then to the left, but all was dark as “Erebus,” and we began to feel comical. Keet called out to the guide, “I say, old fellow, I hope you are not going too far in this darkness visible.” “Nouagh!” said the guide, with a grunt that echoed through the place, “I av’ a flare-up in my pack!” With that he turned round, and rubbing a lucifer on the wall, and pulling a flambeau from his pocket, lighted it, and we proceeded.
We first came to another door, little and sturdy, and grim;—this he kicked open with his foot. We then descended some stone steps; we then went up a few steps, then down again, then round a corner, and then through a niche, till having passed a third door-way without a door, we came to a large vaulted room, lighted by heavy-barred windows from above. “This,” said the guide, “is the place in which the women were confined in time of war, lest they should unman the soldiers by their frightments. Here they were all shut up like ‘cats in a barn,’ and, it is said, that sometimes they fought to desperation. These here marks on the wall are said to be occasioned by their mutual recriminations, and the lex talions, as von gent called Alberto Smytheti say.”
The whole of this part of the structure is of Roman workmanship, but the dungeons to which they lead are evidently of German construction; and were, no doubt, appendages to the original pile; and designed for the exercise of some of the delightful eccentricities of German Margraves or Margravines, which Keet called “little amiabilities of temper and prejudice.” We now reached a low vaulted room, and our guide, with great coolness, took from his German small clothes, two thick candles, which having lighted, we were told to carry them. “Gents,” said he, “look to your heads against the walls, your feet against the floors, and your elbows against the angles, don’t step into holes, and say your prayers when you see a cross upon the stones, for that place once belonged to——one who shall be nameless.”
Our guide now unbolted a small door, and descending two or three steps, we entered a narrow passage which we could just squeeze through, and this terminated in a square, vaulted room. The aspect of the passage, and still more the dismal horror of the vault, which Keet said, “smelt of bye-gone silent systems,” removed all fears that I should not find dungeons terrible enough. It was quite impossible that stone walls can convey a feeling of more hopeless desolation. From this square room branched one more opening; but the utter darkness, the earthy smell, the coldness, the damp, the sullen mystery of the intricate windings it comprehended were such, that we now made, what Keet called, an “awful pause.”
Our guide, however, was not so timid. He said, courageously, “Come allons, gents. If you die here, you will not want a burying,” and he led the way, with a “mind your head here,” and “mind your feet there.” We were, after many tortuous windings, stopped by a door of stone, a foot thick, hewn in one piece out of the granite rock. This door stood ajar, and our “Ferocio” opened it with his thick stick, which he used as a lever. We squeezed past it—Keet gave it one of his pious addresses, and made the sign of the cross. “This is the little Bijou,” said the guide, “a nice little gem of a prison.” It was a small, vaulted stone room, utterly dark, damp, cold, and horribly mouldy to the nose and lungs—and deadly to the body and soul. We shuddered—Keet looked savage, and clenched his “cheese-toaster” with revenge in his looks, as if he would have summoned up the Ghost of the villainous Old Baron—who could form such dungeons—back again to earth, to have a stab at him.
“This is the next,” said the guide, as he passed through another massive door of rock, and another dismal vault. “This is the third,” said he, and passed into another. “This is the fourth,” said he, and took out his brandy bottle—“and this is the fifth,” hurrying us along, and taking sup after sup from the aforesaid brandy bottle—“and this is the eighth, ninth, and tenth.” There were, indeed, ten such horrible dungeons; some of them hewn out of the solid rock, as well as the passages which led to them, and others are constructed of immense blocks of stone.
After passing through several passages, we reached a chamber of lesser dimensions, the aspect and atmosphere of which might have chilled a lion’s heart. Our guide paused as he passed the threshold, took another dose, of course, from his brandy bottle, and said:—“This is the ‘Zammination Chamber.’” Many massive iron rings fastened into the walls of this room, gave indications, sufficiently intelligible, of the mode in which the questionings were wont to be carried on there.