means this chair, with its two ropes? and for what purpose is this
narrow, square compartment, the mouth of which is shrouded in darkness?"
inquired Manuel.

"This is the method of descent to this region, for all those who come to
this convent either as willing penitents, or who are sent hither against
their inclination," returned the sextoness. "And though I came a willing
penitent, yet never, never while the breath shall animate this poor,
weak form, and reason shall remain, can I forget the mental agony, the
intense anguish, of that fearful descent. Ah! it is a cruel engine of
torture, although it tears not the flesh, nor racks the limbs, nor
dislocates the joints. And even though thirty long years have passed
since I made that dread journey," she continued, glancing
upwards--"thirty years since I last saw the light of day--and though I
have since learned and seen how much of the horror of that descent is
produced by the delusion of mechanical ingenuity--yet still I shudder,
and my blood runs cold within me."

"To me, old woman," said the marquis, "your words are an enigma. But you
have excited my curiosity: speak quickly, and explain yourself, for I
may not linger here."

"Behold this basket," returned the nun, without further preface--"these
ropes connect it with complicated machinery in some chamber adjoining
the well itself. In that basket those who are doomed to pass the ordeal
of penitence are lowered from an apartment above. This apartment is
really but a short distance overhead: but the art of the mechanist has
so contrived the four wooden walls of the well, that when the descent of
the basket ceases, those walls rise slowly upward, and thus descent
appears to be continued. Then, when the affrighted female stretches
forth her hands wildly, she encounters the ascending walls, and she
believes that she is still going down--down--down! Oh! signor, it is
most horrible, but a fitting prelude to the terrors of that place!"

And she pointed back toward the chamber of penitence. The marquis was
about to make some observation in reply to the strange disclosures of
the old sextoness, when suddenly the din of a tumult, occurring, as it
seemed, in that department of the convent far overhead, reached his
ears, commencing with the rushing of many feet--the ejaculations of
hostile bands--and then continuing with the clash of arms, and the
shrieks of affrighted women--until, in a few moments, those ominous
sounds were b