Returned to his dungeon, the sufferings of Ambrosio’s body were far more supportable than those of his mind. His dislocated limbs, the nails torn from his hands and feet, and his fingers mashed and broken by the pressure of screws, were far surpassed in anguish by the agitation of his soul and vehemence of his terrors. He saw that, guilty or innocent, his judges were bent upon condemning him: the remembrance of what his denial had already cost him terrified him at the idea of being again applied to the question, and almost engaged him to confess his crimes. Then again the consequences of his confession flashed before him, and rendered him once more irresolute. His death would be inevitable, and that a death the most dreadful: he had listened to Matilda’s doom, and doubted not that a similar was reserved for him. He shuddered at the approaching auto da fé, at the idea of perishing in flames, and only escaping from endurable torments to pass into others more subtle and everlasting! With affright did he bend his mind’s eye on the space beyond the grave; nor could hide from himself how justly he ought to dread heaven’s vengeance.

In this labyrinth of terrors, fain would he have taken his refuge in the gloom of atheism: fain would he have denied the soul’s immortality; have persuaded himself that when his eyes once closed, they would never more open, and that the same moment would annihilate his soul and body. Even this resource was refused to him. To permit his being blind to the fallacy of this belief, his knowledge was too extensive, his understanding too solid and just. He could not help feeling the existence of a God. Those truths, once his comfort, now presented themselves before him in the clearest light; but they only served to drive him to distraction. They destroyed his ill-grounded hopes of escaping punishment; and dispelled by the irresistible brightness of truth and convinction, philosophy’s deceitful vapours faded away like a dream.