Entering the Rathaus by the portal nearest to the Schöner Brunnen we turn to the right, ascend a flight of steps and ring the bell for the Hausmeister,[36] who will guide us with lanterns to those gloomy caverns which like the Piombi of Venice cry shame on the inhumanity of man. We follow our guide down a narrow stone staircase to the dungeons cold and dark as the grave. Over the various entrances were symbolic figures of animals: the two last being ornamented with a red cock and a black cock. No one seems able to say what these strange hieroglyphics denote. The cells were never cleaned, but were warmed by a brazier in the winter. Two of them are furnished with stocks; in each there is an angular wooden couch; in some, when the sight has got gradually accustomed to the darkness, we become aware of a ghastly cleft in the floor. Flaubert, Poe, Scott, and Victor Hugo never fail to make my blood run cold with their descriptions of tortures, but the pages of "Salammbo," of the "Pit and the Pendulum," of "Old Mortality," or "Les Misérables" have no such terrors for my imagination as the actual sight of these deep and horrid dungeons wherein so many hundreds, innocent and guilty alike, have been incarcerated and suffered, with no Anne of Geierstein to deliver them. Presently we pass on to a room of still more horrible interest--the torture-chamber where the judges (Die Blutrichtern) sat, whilst their wretched victim, far removed from human aid and human sympathy, was "examined" till a confession was wrung from him. This vaulted room in the _Loch_ was called the "Chapel." Over it is written "Folterkammer, 1511" (Torture Chamber). On the wall was inscribed the jingling verse-- "_Ad mala patrata hæc sunt atra theatra parata_."