mangled remains of that hero's former spouses, lying in ghastly heaps in the forbidden closet, was nothing to mine when I saw the interior of that secret chamber. A gigantic wheel was revolving, filling half the space, its diameter reaching from the floor to the ceiling. Chains and ropes were attached to this, by which the bodies of those miserable beings who were sentenced to undergo this punishment were secured. As the wheel revolves it carries the wretches up with it and down again, mangling them twice in every revolution. In addition to this 'Mangling done here,' every victim receives a sharp electric shock when he is drawn between the wheel and the ceiling, and again between the wheel and the floor. That is why it is called the Electric Wheel.
'Does it not kill them, Doctor?' I presumed to inquire, trembling.
'No,' he replied, 'they cannot be killed, but they can be shocked and flattened. This is how we punish traitors, agitators, and disturbers of the public peace in the city of Pandapolis. The wheel is also frequently turned by back-biters, liars, slanderers, plunderers, and enraged women when they have a victim whom they wish to punish.
'I am about to introduce you,' he resumed as we went on, 'to a number of great persons whom you will be surprised to see and to know, especially in this place; men who achieved their own greatness, and were therefore deserving of the rewards which the world had to bestow, but did not get them in every case; men who were born great; and men who had greatness thrust upon them. It is a strange thing in our eyes that one man should be born a king, another a beggar; one a genius, another a fool; one a good man, another a villain. But these are things we cannot help, and I suppose they are finally settled by the great law of compensation.'
