They found him stalled deep among the foundations of the fortress, in a stone chamber whose kiln-like conformation shaped itself horribly to the needs and privacies of the ’question.’ He might, this Tassino, have been a calf indeed, by the deadly pallor of his flesh. From the moment when, still in the glow of his send-off, he had dared, producing his _pièce de conviction_ before the Duke, to incriminate Bona on its evidence, and had been gripped by the neck for his pains, and flung, squealing like a rat, into this sewer, it had never warmed by a degree from this livid hue. Sickened, rather, since here, dreadfully interned throughout the day, like a schoolboy locked in with an impossible imposition, he had been left to writhe and moan, in awful anticipation of the coming inquisition and its likely consequences to himself. They were prefigured for him, in order to the sharp-setting of his wits, in a score or so instruments, all slack and somnolent and unstrung for the time being, but suggestive of hideous potentialities in their tautening. The rack riveted to the floor; the pulley pendent from the ceiling; the stocks in the corner, with the chafing-dish, primed with knobs of charcoal, ready at its foot-holes; the escalero or chevalet, which was a trough for strangling recalcitrant hogs in, limb by limb; the iron dice for forcing into the heels, and the canes for twisting and breaking the fingers; the water-bag and the thumbscrew and the fanged pincers—such, and such in twenty variations of hook and stirrup and dangling monstrosities of block and steel, but all pointing a common moral of terrific human pain, where the inducements to a calmly thought-out self-exculpation which had been offered to Tassino’s solitary consideration. No wonder that, when at last the key turned and the harsh door creaked to admit his inquisitors, he should have screamed out with the mortal scream of a creature that finds itself cut off from escape in a burning house. The Castellan struck him, judicially, across the mouth, and he was silent immediately, falling on his knees and softly chattering bloody teeth. Galeazzo, rubbing his chin, conned him at his smiling leisure; while, motionless and apathetic in the opening of the door, stood a couple of dark, aproned figures, one a Nubian. ’Ebbéne, Messer Tassino,’ purred the Duke at length; ’has reconsideration found your indictment open to some revision? Rise, sir—rise.’ He waved his hand loftily. The wretch, after a vain attempt or two, succeeded in getting to his feet, on which he stood like a man palsied. He essayed the while to answer; but somehow his tongue was at odds with his palate. The Duke, watching him, stealthily lifted his left hand, showing a green stone on one of its fingers. ’Mark ye that?’ said he, smiling. The other’s lips moved inaudibly; his glittering eyes were fixed upon the token. ’Say again,’ said Galeazzo, ’who charged ye with it to this errand?’ The poor animal mumbled.