It was enough to melt the hardest heart to witness her agony; but she bore it with a degree of fortitude and patience, I could not have supposed possible, had I not been compelled to behold it.  When I entered the room she looked up and said, “Have you come to release me, or only to suffer with me?” I did not dare to reply, for the priest was there, but when he left us she exclaimed, “My child, let nothing induce you to believe this cursed religion.  It will be the death of you, and that death, will be the death of a dog.”  I suppose she meant that they would kill me as they would a dog.  She then asked, “Who put you here?” “My Father,” said I.  “He must have been a brute,” said she, “or he never could have done it.”  At one time I happened to mention the name of God, when she fiercely exclaimed with gestures of contempt, “A God!  You believe there is one, do you?  Don’t you suffer yourself to believe any such thing.  Think you that a wise, merciful, and all powerful being would allow such a hell as this to exist?  Would he suffer me to be torn from friends and home, from my poor children and all that my soul holds dear, to be confined in this den of iniquity, and tortured to death in this cruel manner?  No, O, no.  He would at once destroy these monsters in human form; he would not suffer them, for one moment, to breathe the pure air of heaven.”

At another time she exclaimed, “O, my children! my poor motherless children!  What will become of them?  God of mercy, protect my children!” Thus, at one moment, she would say there was no God, and the next, pray to him for help.  This did not surprise me, for she was in such intolerable misery she did not realize what she did say.  Every few hours the priest came in, and gave the rollers a turn, when her joints would crack and—­but I cannot describe it.  The sight made me sick and faint at the time, as the recollection of it, does now.  It seemed as though that man must have had a heart of adamant, or he could not have done it.  She would shriek, and groan, and weep, but it did not affect him in the least.  He was as calm, and deliberate as though he had a block of wood in his hands, instead of a human being.  When I saw him coming, I once shook my head at her, to have her stop speaking; but when he was gone, she said, “Don’t shake your head at me; I do not fear him.  He can but kill me, and the quicker he does it the better.  I would be glad if he would put an end to my misery at once, but that would be too merciful.  He is determined to kill me by inches, and it makes no difference what I say to him.”

She had no food, or drink, during the three days I was there, and the priest never spoke to her.  He brought me my bread and water regularly, and I would gladly have given it to that poor woman if she would have taken it.  But she would not accept the offer.  It would only prolong her sufferings, and she wished to die.  I do not suppose she could have lived, had she been taken out when I first saw her.