The next compartment was still duskier
and dismaller than the last, and he bade us cast our eyes up into the
obscurity and see a beam, where the condemned ones used to be hanged. I
looked and looked, and closed my eyes so as to see the clearer in this
horrible duskiness on opening them again. Finally, I thought I discerned
the accursed beam, and the rest of the party were certain that they saw
it. Next beyond this, I think, was a stone staircase, steep, rudely cut,
and narrow, down which the condemned were brought to death; and beyond
this, still on the same basement range of the castle, a low and narrow
[corridor] through which we passed and saw a row of seven massive
pillars, supporting two parallel series of groined arches, like those in
the chapel which we first entered. This was Bonnivard's prison, and the
scene of Byron's poem.
The arches are dimly lighted by narrow loopholes, pierced through the
immensely thick wall, but at such a height above the floor that we could
catch no glimpse of land or water, or scarcely of the sky.
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