![]() However, he soon stumbles and collapses to the ground, where he falls asleep. Ripping off a piece of the hem from his robe, he places it against the wall so that he can count the number of steps required to walk the perimeter of the cell. ![]() This mobility then leads him to surmise that he is not in a tomb, but perhaps in one of the dungeons at Toledo, an infamous Inquisition prison. He is afraid that he has been locked in a tomb, but he gets up and walks a few paces. He is confused because he knows that the usual fate of Inquisition victims is a public auto-da-fé, or “act of faith”-an execution normally taking the form of a hanging. When he wakes, he faces complete darkness. Upon receiving his death sentence, the narrator swoons, losing consciousness. ![]() An unnamed narrator opens the story by revealing that he has been sentenced to death during the time of the Inquisition-an institution of the Catholic government in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spain that persecuted all Protestants and heretical Catholics. ![]()
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