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Charles Dickens - Pictures from Italy
is no light weight. 'Voilą les oubliettes! Voilą les oubliettes! Subterranean! Frightful! Black! Terrible!
Deadly! Les oubliettes de l'Inquisition!'
My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into the vaults, where these forgotten creatures, with
recollections of the world outside: of wives, friends, children, brothers: starved to death, and made the
stones ring with their unavailing groans. But, the thrill I felt on seeing the accursed wall below, decayed
and broken through, and the sun shining in through its gaping wounds, was like a sense of victory and
triumph. I felt exalted with the proud delight of living in these degenerate times, to see it. As if I were
the hero of some high achievement! The light in the doleful vaults was typical of the light that has
streamed in, on all persecution in God's name, but which is not yet at its noon! It cannot look more
lovely to a blind man newly restored to sight, than to a traveller who sees it, calmly and majestically,
treading down the darkness of that Infernal Well.
CHAPTER III - AVIGNON TO GENOA
Goblin, having shown les oubliettes, felt that her great coup was struck. She let the door
fall with a crash, and stood upon it with her arms a-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously.
When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, under the outer gateway of the fortress, to buy
a little history of the building. Her cabaret, a dark, low room, lighted by small windows, sunk in the
thick wall - in the softened light, and with its forge-like chimney; its little counter by the door, with
bottles, jars, and glasses on it; its household implements and scraps of dress against the wall; and a
sober-looking woman (she must have a congenial life of it, with Goblin,) knitting at the door - looked
exactly like a picture by OSTADE.
I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of dream, and yet with the delightful sense of having
awakened from it, of which the light, down in the vaults, had given me the assurance. The immense
thickness and giddy height of the walls, the enormous strength of the massive towers, the great extent of
the building, its gigantic proportions, frowning aspect, and barbarous irregularity, awaken awe and
wonder. The recollection of its opposite old uses: an impregnable fortress, a luxurious palace, a horrible
prison, a place of torture, the court of the Inquisition: at one and the same time, a house of feasting,
fighting, religion, and blood: gives to every stone in its huge form a fearful interest, and imparts new
meaning to its incongruities. I could think of little, however, then, or long afterwards, but the sun in the
dungeons. The palace coming down to be the lounging-place of noisy soldiers, and being forced to echo
their rough talk, and common oaths, and to have their garments fluttering from its dirty windows, was
some reduction of its state, and something to rejoice at; but the day in its cells, and the sky for the roof of
its chambers of cruelty - that was its desolation and defeat! If I had seen it in a blaze from ditch to
rampart, I should have felt that not that light, nor all the light in all the fire that burns, could waste it, like
the sunbeams in its secret council-chamber, and its prisons.
Before I quit this Palace of the Popes, let me translate from the little history I mentioned just now, a short
anecdote, quite appropriate to itself, connected with its adventures.
'An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew of Pierre de Lude, the Pope's legate, seriously
insulted some distinguished ladies of Avignon, whose relations, in revenge, seized the young man, and
horribly mutilated him. For several years the legate kept his revenge within his own breast, but
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