the following narrative of the Inquisition
ceremonials with all their horrid semblance
of religion and mercy.

Carcel was a goldsmith in the Serf's
Street, Seville, and was arrested on the
second of April, sixteen hundred and eighty,
at ten o'clock in the evening, as he was
finishing a gold necklace for one of the maids
of honour. A week after his first arrest
Carcel was examined. In an ante-room, says
he (I give it, as far as I can remember,
in his own plain touching way) a smith
frees me of my irons, and I pass from the
ante-chamber to the Inquisitor's table, as
the small inner room is called. It is hung
with blue and citron-coloured taffety. At
one end, between the two grated windows, is
a gigantic crucifix, and, on the central estrade
(a table fifteen feet long surrounded by
armchairs), with his back to the crucifix, sits
the secretary, on my right Francis Delgado
Genados, the Grand Inquisitor who is a secular
priest. The other Inquisitors had just left;
but the ink was still wet in their quills, and I
saw, on papers before their chairs, some names
marked with red ink. I am seated on a low stool
opposite the secretary. The Inquisitor asks
my name and profession, and why I come
there, exhorting me to confess as the only
means of quickly regaining my liberty. He
hears me; but, when I fling myself weeping at
his knees, he says coolly there is no hurry
about my case; that he has more pressing
business than mine waiting (the secretary
smiles), and rings a little silver bell which
stands beside him on the black cloth, for the
alcaid; who leads me off down a long gallery
where my chest is brought in, and an inventory
taken by the secretary. They cut my hair
off and strip me of everything, even to my
ring and gold buttons; but they leave me my
beads, my handkerchief, and some money I
had fortunately sewn in my garters. I am
then led bare-headed into a cell, and left to
think and despair till evening, when they
bring me supper.

The prisoners are seldom put together.
Silence perpetual and strict is maintained in
all the cells. If any prisoner moans,
complains, or even prays too loud, the gaolers
who watch the corridors night and day
warn him through the grating. If the
offence is repeated, they storm in and load
him with blows to intimidate the other
prisoners, who, in the deep grave-like silence,
hear your every cry and every blow.

Once every two months the Inquisitor,
accompanied by his secretary and interpreter,
visits the prisoners, and asks them if their
food is brought them at regular hours, or if
they have any complaint to make against the
gaolers. But this is only a parade of justice;
for, if a prisoner makes complaints, these are
treated as mere ravings and fancies, and never
attended to.

But these severities are trifles in
comparison to the tortures some of my
fellow-sufferers were put to, because their crime of
heresy could not be proved without their own
confession.

The water torture consisted in passing
water down the wretch's throat till he almost
burst, and then fastening him in a sort of
vice and suspending him on a pole that almost
broke his spine.

In the fire torture they lit a very fierce
flame; then larded the prisoner's naked feet
and held them for nearly an hour towards
the flames, till he invented lies that pleased
them, or confessed truths that inculpated
himself.

In the rope torture they tie the man to a
horizontal rope by his hands, which are tied
behind his back; they then raise him in the
air, and suddenly let him fall with a jolt that
dislocates half his joints and makes him utter
torturing cries. The only persons present at
these butchery scenes are the stolid Inquisitors
and the bishop, the grand vicar, or his
deputy. There are never more than two
lurid torches, which show the executioners,
who are clothed in black robes and black
hoods that hide all the face but have holes for
eyes, nose, and mouth. They strip the
prisoner to his waistband; and, if he faint, the
doctor of the Inquisition comes in to pronounce
how much more suffering the tortured
man can bear.

If all this fails, and soul and body are both
of steel, the Inquisitors try snares. They
put apostates into the bruised man's cell, who
comfort him and complain of the Inquisition
as one of the greatest scourges with which
God ever allowed man to be inflicted. The
Inquisitors, too, profess to be touched with
their sufferings, to wish their conversion
rather than their hurt, and to pray them to
make even the slightest confession, which is
to be kept an inviolable secret, and will
restore them to instant liberty.

One Saturday, when, after my meagre
prison dinner, I gave my linen, as usual, to
the gaolers to send to the wash, they would
not take it, and a great, cold breath whispers
at my heart—to-morrow is the Auto-da-Fe.
Immediately after the vespers at the
cathedral they rang for matins—which they
never do but on the rejoicing eve of a great
feast—and I knew that my horrid suspicions
were right. Was I glad at my escape from
this living tomb, or was I paralysed by fear,
at the pile, perhaps, already hewn and
stacked for my wretched body? I know not.
I was torn in pieces by the devils that rack
the brains of unhappy men. I refused my
next meal; but, contrary to their wont, they
pressed it more than usual. Was it to give me
strength to bear my torture? Do God's eyes
not reach to the prisons of the Inquisition?

I was just falling into a sickly, fitful sleep,
worn out with conjecturing; when, about
eleven o'clock, the great bolts of my cell
ground and jolted back, and a party of gaolers