The Pit and the Pendulum (1964) - full transcript
I was sick.
Sick unto death
with that long agony.
And when they at length
unbound me for the judgment,
I felth that my strength
were leaving me.
The sentence.
The terrible sentence of death
was the last phrase of
distinct accentuation
to reach my ears.
After that,
the sound of the inquisitorial voices
seemed merged in one
dreamy indeterminate hum.
And then
there stole into my fancy,
like a rich musical note,
the thought of what sweet rest
must await us in the grave.
The though came
gently
and stealthily.
And it seemed long
before it attained
full appreciation.
But
just as my spirit came
at length properly to feel
and entertain this thought...
the universe became
no more than night,
silence,
stillness.
I had swooned
but still I would not say that
I had lost all consciousness.
In the deepest slumber...
No!
In delirium...
No!
In a swoon...
No!
In death...
No!
Even in the grave,
all is not lost.
Else there is no
immortality for man.
Arousing from the most
profound of slumbers,
we may break the gossamer web...
of some dream.
Yet,
in a second afterward,
so frail may that web have been,
we remember not
what we have dreamed.
Amid frequent endeavors
and earnest struggles,
to regather some token of that
state of seeming nothingness
into which my soul had lapsed,
there have been moments
when I dreamed of success.
There have been brief,
very brief periods
when I have conjured up
remembrances which the lucid reason
of a later epoch
assures me could have had
reference only to that condition
where consciousness
seems annihilated.
Until the moment when
a hideous dizziness opressed me
at the mere idea of
the interminableness
of the descent...
Then comes a sense
of sudden motionlessness,
as if those who bore me
(a ghastly train!)
had outrun, in their descent,
the limits of the limitless,
and paused, defeated
by the wearisomeness of their toil.
And then all is only madness,
the madness of a memory which
busies itself among forbidden things.
Very suddenly there came back
to my soul motion and sound,
the tumultuous motion of the heart
and the sound of its beating.
Then the tought,
and a shuddering terror,
and earnest endeavor to
comprehend my true state.
Suddenly,
a fearful idea drove the blood
in torrents upon my heart.
I proceded for many paces
but still all was blackness
and vacancy.
It seemed evident that mine was not,
at least, the most hideous of fates,
To have been buried
alive in my grave
was not the one that
had been reserved for me.
I followed the wall up,
stepping with careful distrust.
This process, however,
afforded me no means
of ascertaining
the dimensions of my dungeon,
as I might make its circuit
without being aware of the fact,
so perfectly uniform
seemed the wall.
The death just avoided
was of that character
which I had regarded
as fabulous and frivolous in
the tales respecting the Inquisition.
To the victims of its tyranny,
there were no other alternatives
than death with
its direst physical agonies...
or death with its most
hideous moral horrors.
I had therefore been
reserved for the latter.
My nerves
had been unstrung
by long suffering,
until I had become in every respect
a fitting subject for the species
of torture which awaited me.
What boots it to tell of
the long, long hours of horror
more than mortal,
during which I counted the
rushing oscillations of the steel!
My cognizance of the pit had become
known to the inquisitorial agents,
and I had thus been condemned to
a different kind of destruction:
a milder one.
Milder?
I half smiled in my agony
thinking of the singular application
I had made of such a term.
Days passed,
it might have been
that many days passed,
ere it swept so closely over me
as to fan me...
with its acrid breath.
I prayed to heaven,
I wearied it with my prayer,
to make the steel descend
more speedily.
I grew mad.
Frantic.
And then suddenly...
I fell into a deep calm
and lay smiling
at the glittering death,
as a child at some rare bubble.
All of a sudden!
A half-formed though of joy,
of hope,
rushed to my mind.
Yet,
what business had I with hope?
It was a thought
only half-formed.
I felt that it was
a thought of joy,
but I felt also that it
perished in its formation.
The vibration of the pendulum
was at right angles to my length.
I saw that the crescent
was designed
to cross the region of the heart.
It would tear the fabric of my shirt,
then it would return
and repeat its operation,
again -- and again.
Nothwithstanding its terrific vigor,
all that it would accomplish,
for several minutes,
would be the tearing
of my shirt's fabric.
To the right,
to the left,
and swinging far and wide,
further off,
further off,
and then it would return,
while I quivered in every nerve
as I thought how it would be sufficient
for the machinery to descend slightly
to precipite upon my bosom
that glistening axe.
It was hope,
the hope that triumphs
even on the rack,
that whisperes into the ears
of the death-condemned.
I saw that some ten
or twelve vibrations
would bring the steel in actual
contact with my clothes.
The bandage which enveloped
me was unique.
The first stroke of the razor
athwart any portion of the band,
would so detach it
that it might be unwound from me
by means of my left hand.
The bandage enveloped me
entirely, in all directions,
save
in the path of the crescent...
Scarcely had I let
my head fall back
when there flashed upon my mind
what I cannot better describe
than as the unformed half
of that idea of deliverance,
and of which only a moiety had
floated indeterminately
through my brain
when I had noticed the dish.
The whole idea was now present,
feeble,
scarcely sane,
scarcely definite,
but still...
entire.
For the moment, at least, I was free.
Free--
and in the grasp of the Inquisition!
All of my movements were being watched.
I had but escaped death
in one form of agony
to be delivered
unto something worse.
Death,
Any death but that of the pit!
Fool!
Might I not have known that
into the pit I must go?
that into the pit was the object
of the burning iron to urge me?
The walls rushed back!
The room regained its previous shape.
The French army had entered Toledo.
The Inquisition was
in the hands of its enemies.
Sick unto death
with that long agony.
And when they at length
unbound me for the judgment,
I felth that my strength
were leaving me.
The sentence.
The terrible sentence of death
was the last phrase of
distinct accentuation
to reach my ears.
After that,
the sound of the inquisitorial voices
seemed merged in one
dreamy indeterminate hum.
And then
there stole into my fancy,
like a rich musical note,
the thought of what sweet rest
must await us in the grave.
The though came
gently
and stealthily.
And it seemed long
before it attained
full appreciation.
But
just as my spirit came
at length properly to feel
and entertain this thought...
the universe became
no more than night,
silence,
stillness.
I had swooned
but still I would not say that
I had lost all consciousness.
In the deepest slumber...
No!
In delirium...
No!
In a swoon...
No!
In death...
No!
Even in the grave,
all is not lost.
Else there is no
immortality for man.
Arousing from the most
profound of slumbers,
we may break the gossamer web...
of some dream.
Yet,
in a second afterward,
so frail may that web have been,
we remember not
what we have dreamed.
Amid frequent endeavors
and earnest struggles,
to regather some token of that
state of seeming nothingness
into which my soul had lapsed,
there have been moments
when I dreamed of success.
There have been brief,
very brief periods
when I have conjured up
remembrances which the lucid reason
of a later epoch
assures me could have had
reference only to that condition
where consciousness
seems annihilated.
Until the moment when
a hideous dizziness opressed me
at the mere idea of
the interminableness
of the descent...
Then comes a sense
of sudden motionlessness,
as if those who bore me
(a ghastly train!)
had outrun, in their descent,
the limits of the limitless,
and paused, defeated
by the wearisomeness of their toil.
And then all is only madness,
the madness of a memory which
busies itself among forbidden things.
Very suddenly there came back
to my soul motion and sound,
the tumultuous motion of the heart
and the sound of its beating.
Then the tought,
and a shuddering terror,
and earnest endeavor to
comprehend my true state.
Suddenly,
a fearful idea drove the blood
in torrents upon my heart.
I proceded for many paces
but still all was blackness
and vacancy.
It seemed evident that mine was not,
at least, the most hideous of fates,
To have been buried
alive in my grave
was not the one that
had been reserved for me.
I followed the wall up,
stepping with careful distrust.
This process, however,
afforded me no means
of ascertaining
the dimensions of my dungeon,
as I might make its circuit
without being aware of the fact,
so perfectly uniform
seemed the wall.
The death just avoided
was of that character
which I had regarded
as fabulous and frivolous in
the tales respecting the Inquisition.
To the victims of its tyranny,
there were no other alternatives
than death with
its direst physical agonies...
or death with its most
hideous moral horrors.
I had therefore been
reserved for the latter.
My nerves
had been unstrung
by long suffering,
until I had become in every respect
a fitting subject for the species
of torture which awaited me.
What boots it to tell of
the long, long hours of horror
more than mortal,
during which I counted the
rushing oscillations of the steel!
My cognizance of the pit had become
known to the inquisitorial agents,
and I had thus been condemned to
a different kind of destruction:
a milder one.
Milder?
I half smiled in my agony
thinking of the singular application
I had made of such a term.
Days passed,
it might have been
that many days passed,
ere it swept so closely over me
as to fan me...
with its acrid breath.
I prayed to heaven,
I wearied it with my prayer,
to make the steel descend
more speedily.
I grew mad.
Frantic.
And then suddenly...
I fell into a deep calm
and lay smiling
at the glittering death,
as a child at some rare bubble.
All of a sudden!
A half-formed though of joy,
of hope,
rushed to my mind.
Yet,
what business had I with hope?
It was a thought
only half-formed.
I felt that it was
a thought of joy,
but I felt also that it
perished in its formation.
The vibration of the pendulum
was at right angles to my length.
I saw that the crescent
was designed
to cross the region of the heart.
It would tear the fabric of my shirt,
then it would return
and repeat its operation,
again -- and again.
Nothwithstanding its terrific vigor,
all that it would accomplish,
for several minutes,
would be the tearing
of my shirt's fabric.
To the right,
to the left,
and swinging far and wide,
further off,
further off,
and then it would return,
while I quivered in every nerve
as I thought how it would be sufficient
for the machinery to descend slightly
to precipite upon my bosom
that glistening axe.
It was hope,
the hope that triumphs
even on the rack,
that whisperes into the ears
of the death-condemned.
I saw that some ten
or twelve vibrations
would bring the steel in actual
contact with my clothes.
The bandage which enveloped
me was unique.
The first stroke of the razor
athwart any portion of the band,
would so detach it
that it might be unwound from me
by means of my left hand.
The bandage enveloped me
entirely, in all directions,
save
in the path of the crescent...
Scarcely had I let
my head fall back
when there flashed upon my mind
what I cannot better describe
than as the unformed half
of that idea of deliverance,
and of which only a moiety had
floated indeterminately
through my brain
when I had noticed the dish.
The whole idea was now present,
feeble,
scarcely sane,
scarcely definite,
but still...
entire.
For the moment, at least, I was free.
Free--
and in the grasp of the Inquisition!
All of my movements were being watched.
I had but escaped death
in one form of agony
to be delivered
unto something worse.
Death,
Any death but that of the pit!
Fool!
Might I not have known that
into the pit I must go?
that into the pit was the object
of the burning iron to urge me?
The walls rushed back!
The room regained its previous shape.
The French army had entered Toledo.
The Inquisition was
in the hands of its enemies.