into the theatre to be present at the more
exciting part of the performance.

Sister Gertrude was first made to ascend the
high stage in the centre of the theatre. During
the reading of her sentence, which lasted half
an hour, "bold and unabashed in aspect, mumbling,
she vomited forth horrid blasphemies,
so that the ushers at her side were obliged to
shut her mouth with a gag."

Then the same was done by Fra Romualdo.
He, too, showed all the signs of the most hardened
impenitence. He did not bow to the
crucifix, nor even to the Inquisitors! But it
does not seem to have been considered necessary
to gag him.

The next thing was to strip the prisoners of
their religious habit. For this purpose the
pitched and painted garments had to be lifted
off them. Then the friar's and nun's dresses
were " opprobriously" taken off, and the pitch
saturated garments were replaced. The hair
of the female prisoner was also saturated with
pitch.

Just then, the wretched woman " seemed to
give some signs of a disposition to relent."
Immediately a theologian of first- rate power
was called in haste from a neighbouring monastery
of Jesuits, and was closeted with her.
But at the end of a very few minutes, he left
her, and reported that any apparent movement
of penitence on her part had been either momentary
or feigned.

Then the sitting in the theatre was at an
end. The Inquisitors rose, and returned in
carriages provided by the viceroy, to their
palace; not to be absent—let it not be supposed
for an instant—from the burning, but to
change their dresses, and to return forthwith
to the Piano di Santo Erasimo, in which the
execution was to take place.

There also, scaffoldings and stands had
been erected, in such sort as to allow everybody
a full and near view of the execution.
And the senators and the nobles, and
the monks and the friars, and the ladies, all
hurried away from the theatre to their places
in the plain of Santo Erasimo. And there,
again, refreshments—ices, cakes, and so forth
—were handed round; for it was now within
an hour of sunset; they had been at it all day;
and a little more sustentation of the body was
necessary for those who were not sustained by
the excitement of being about to be burned
alive.

From the theatre to the place of execution,
each of the two impenitent heretics was
carried on a cart drawn by bullocks; standing
upright on the cart, tied to a stake securely
fixed in the floor of it. The cart carrying
Gertrude entered the space railed off in
the middle of the large piazza, first. Four
theologians got into each cart, two standing on
each side of either prisoner, "and all these
doctors continued their fervent exhortations
and last salutary admonitions unceasingly,
during the whole transit."

Think of the horrible falsity, sham, and
hollowness of the whole thing! Picture to
yourself the figures of those eight learned
divines, in their doctors' gowns, with the
"azure hat" peculiar to the servants of the Inquisition
on their heads, vieing with each other
in urgently and with much gesticulation deafening
the ears and stunning the minds of the
poor wretches about to die in the flames, with
voluble trash drawn from the cut- and- dry
manuals of their science!

The stake to which each victim was to be
bound, was erected on a scaffolding raised a
considerable height from the ground. Under
this scaffolding, and not around the person of
the prisoner, were heaped together the fagots
and fuel; an arrangement which secured,
both considerable prolongation of the victims'
agonies, and a far more complete view of them
by the assembled multitude, than the less ingenious
method of heaping fagots around the
body of the sufferer.

"Then," when Gertrude had ascended the
scaffold and been bound to the stake, "the
servants and indefatigable priests of the Holy
Office opened their last batteries against the
hardened heart of the obstinate wretch. And
truly it is not possible to describe with the pen
how they sweated for her conversion, both
coming along in the cart, and on the scaffold
in the last moments of her miserable life, in
the hope of bringing her to see her errors! But at
last, their energies being worn out, and seeing
that their exhortations, their labour, and their
tears were uselessly poured forth, they were
obliged to retire and leave the place to Justice.

"Thereupon they first burned her hair [saturated
with pitch, it will be remembered] to let
her feel a small taste of the burning of the fire
[literally word for word], but she showed no
more care for her hair than for her soul. Then
they set fire to the pitch-soaked outer garment,
to try whether the heat of the flames would
make her open her eyes. But finding that she
was still most obstinate, they set fire to the
wood of the furnace underneath, which, burning
the planks that supported her, the wretch
plunged down into the fire, and was there consumed,
and her soul passed from the temporal
to the eternal fire."

Then came the bullock-drawn cart bearing
the other victim. " But as he was descending
from it, the concourse of people who crowded
around him was extraordinary. Cavaliers,
monks, and people of every condition, showing
an immense zeal for his eternal salvation, threw
themselves at his knees, and with loving reproaches,
and with entreaties, and with acts of
profound humiliation on their knees, strove by
force of tears to prove their desire for his salvation,
imploring him to repent, and to have
mercy on his own soul. But they all spoke
both with their tongues and with their eyes to
one deaf. He remained inflexible, without
giving the least sign of repentance or emotion."

"Then he was closely bound to the stake by
the executioner. And they set fire to the garment
soaked in piteh. Thereupon he made
violent struggles to loose himself, and blew at