Around, wherever I turned my eyes, there was little else to be seen
but skeletons of human bodies--with their arms uplifted, and
stretching forward--suspended in every direction from the walls. One
of them I involuntarily touched, and down it came with a fearful
crash--its dry bones rattling upon the granite floor, until the whole
cavern reverberated with the sound. I turned from this spectacle, and
opposite beheld a guillotine--the fatal axe smeared with blood; and
near it was a head--looking as if it had just been severed from the
body--with the countenance ghastly--the lips parted--and the eyes
staring wide open. There, also, was the body, covered, however, with a
cloth, so that little was seen except the neck, mangled and bloody,
and a small portion of the hand, hanging out from its shroud, grasping
in its fingers a tablet with the following inscription: