Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself actually dead.  Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction, is altogether inconsistent with real existence; —­ but where and in what state was I?  The condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at the autos-da-fe, and one of these had been held on the very night of the day of my trial.  Had I been remanded to my dungeon, to await the next sacrifice, which would not take place for many months?  This I at once saw could not be.  Victims had been in immediate demand.  Moreover, my dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at Toledo, had stone floors, and light was not altogether excluded.

A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart, and for a brief period, I once more relapsed into insensibility.  Upon recovering, I at once started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every fibre.  I thrust my arms wildly above and around me in all directions.  I felt nothing; yet dreaded to move a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a tomb.  Perspiration burst from every pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead.  The agony of suspense grew at length intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining from their sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of light.  I proceeded for many paces; but still all was blackness and vacancy.  I breathed more freely.  It seemed evident that mine was not, at least, the most hideous of fates.

And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo.  Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated —­ fables I had always deemed them —­ but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper.  Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate, perhaps even more fearful, awaited me?  That the result would be death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my judges to doubt.  The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me.

My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction.  It was a wall, seemingly of stone masonry —­ very smooth, slimy, and cold.  I followed it up; stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain antique narratives had inspired me.  This process, however, afforded me no means of ascertaining the dimensions of my dungeon; as I might make its circuit, and return to the point whence I set out, without being aware of the fact; so perfectly uniform seemed the wall.  I therefore sought the knife which had been in my pocket, when led into the inquisitorial chamber; but it was gone; my clothes had been exchanged for a wrapper of coarse serge.  I had thought of forcing the blade in some minute crevice of the masonry, so as to identify my point of departure.  The difficulty, nevertheless, was but trivial; although, in the disorder of my fancy,