Taking up a lamp from the table in her cell, she led the way to the further end of the passage, threw open a door, and thrusting forth the light beyond the opening, exclaimed in a tone denoting a reminiscence the bitterness of which long years had scarcely mitigated--"That is the road whereby I came hither; and many, many others have traveled the same downward path!" The marquis seized the lamp, and beheld, a few paces from from him, a wicker chair, to which two ropes, hanging perpendicularly down, were fastened. He raised his eyes, following the direction of the ropes, but as there was now no other light in the pit than the feeble, flickering one shed by the lamp which he held, his glances could not penetrate the dense obscurity that prevailed above. "What 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!"