And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name and I shuddered because no sound succeeded. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips. They appeared to me white - whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words - and thin even to grotesqueness thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness - of immoveable resolution - of stern contempt of human torture. Yet, for a while, I saw but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges.
This only for a brief period for presently I heard no more. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution - perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. The sentence - the dread sentence of death - was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. I WAS sick - sick unto death with that long agony and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
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