As we were close by the castle
entrance, we thought it advisable to seek admission, though rather
doubtful whether the Swiss gendarme might not deem it a sin to let us
into the castle on Sunday. But he very readily admitted us under his
covered drawbridge, and called an old man from within the fortress to
show us whatever was to be seen. This latter personage was a staid,
rather grim, and Calvinistic-looking old worthy; but he received us
without scruple, and forthwith proceeded to usher us into a range of most
dismal dungeons, extending along the basement of the castle, on a level
with the surface of the lake. First, if I remember aright, we came to
what he said had been a chapel, and which, at all events, looked like an
aisle of one, or rather such a crypt as I have seen beneath a cathedral,
being a succession of massive pillars supporting groined arches,--a very
admirable piece of gloomy Gothic architecture. Next, we came to a very
dark compartment of the same dungeon range, where he pointed to a sort of
bed, or what might serve for a bed, hewn in the solid rock, and this, our
guide said, had been the last sleeping-place of condemned prisoners on
the night before their execution.
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