us—to stop mules, displace fruit-stalls
and street-performers and their laughing
audiences. We at last reached the Church of
All the Saints; where, tired, dusty, bleeding,
and faint, we were to hear mass.

The church had a grave-vault aspect and
was dreadful as a charnel-house. The great
altar was veiled in black, and was lit with six
silver candles, whose flames shone like yellow
stars, with clear twinkle, and a soft halo
round each black, fire-tipped wick. On each
side of the altar—that seemed to bar out God
and his mercy from us, and to wrap the very
sun in a grave-cloak—were two thrones, one
for the Grand Inquisitor and his counsel,
another for the King and his court. The one
was filled with sexton-like lawyers; the other
with jewelled and feathered men.

In front of the great altar, and near the
door—where the blessed daylight shines with
hope and joy; but not for us—is another altar
on which six gilded and illuminated missals
laid open; those books of the Gospels, too, in
which I had once read such texts as—God is
love; Forgive as ye would be forgiven;
Faith, hope, charity: these three, but the
greatest of these is charity. Near this lesser
altar the executive monks had raised a
balustraded gallery with bare benches; on
which sat the criminals in their yellow and
flame-striped tabards, with their godfathers.
The doomed ones came last; the more innocent
first. Those who entered the black-hung
church first, passing up nearest to the altar,
sat there, either praying, or in a frightened
trance of horrid expectancy. The trembling
living corpses wearing the yellow and red
mitres, came last, preceded by a gigantic
crucifix, the face turned FROM them.

Immediately following these poor mitred
men came servitors of the Inquisition,
carrying four human effigies fastened to long
staves, and four chests containing the bones
of those men who had died in the claws of
the Inquisition before the fire could be got
ready. The coffers were painted with flames
and demons, and the effigies wore the dreadful
mitre and the crimson and yellow shirt,
all a-flame with typical paint. The effigies
sometimes represented men tried for heresy
since their death, and whose estates had
since been confiscated and their effigies
doomed to be burnt, as a warning for no
one within their reach to differ in opinion
with the Inquisition.

Every prisoner being now in his place—
godfathers, torchmen, pikemen, musketeers,
inquisitors, and flaunting court—the Provincial
of the Augustins mounted the pulpit, followed
by his ministrant, and preached a stormy,
denouncing, exulting sermon, half an hour
long (it seemed a month of anguish), in
which his "burning eloquence" compared
the Church to Noah's ark; but with this
difference, that those animals who entered it
before the deluge came out of it unaltered,
while the blessed Inquisition had, by God's
blessing, the power of changing those its
walls once had shut on, turning out—meek as
the lambs he saw around him; so tranquil
and devout—those who had once been cruel
as wolves, and savage and daring as lions.

This cruel, mocking sermon over, two
readers mounted the pulpit to shout the list
of the names of the condemned, their crimes
(now, for the first time, known to them) and
their sentences. We grew all ears, and
trembled as each name was read.

As each name was called the alcaid led out
the owner of it from his pen to the middle of
the gallery opposite the pulpit, where he
remained standing, taper in hand; after the
sentence, he was led to the altar, where he
had to put his hand on one of the missals,
and to remain there on his knees.

At the end of each sentence, the reader
stopped to pronounce in a loud angry voice, a
full confession of faith, which he exhorted us
(the guilty) to join in with heart and voice.
Then we all returned to our places. My offence
I found, was having spoken bitterly of the
Inquisition, and called a crucifix a mere bit of
cut ivory. I was therefore declared
excommunicated, my goods confiscated to the
king, and I was banished Spain, and condemned to
the Havannah galleys for five years, with the
following penances: I must renounce all
friendship with heretics and suspected persons;
I must, for three years, confess and
communicate three times a month; I must
recite five times a day, for three years, the
Pater and Ave Maria in honour of the Five
Wounds; I must hear mass and sermon
every Sunday and feast-day; and, above all,
I must guard carefully the secret of all I
had said, heard, or seen in the holy office
(which oath, as the reader will observe, I
have carefully kept).

The sentence once read, and the worst
known, even the condemned seemed happier;
and every one fell to eating the figs and
bread he had no appetite for in the morning;
for we were all worn out with our long fast.

The Inquisitor then quitted his seat,
resumed his robes, and, followed by twenty
priests each with a staff in his hand, he
passed into the middle of the church; and,
with divers prayers, some of us were relieved
from excommunication, each of us receiving
a buffet from a priest. Once, such an insult
would have sent the blood in a rush to my
head, and I had died but I had given a
return blow; now, so weak and
broken-spirited was I, I broke into tears.

All this time the fussy, frightened citizen
who served as my godfather had not dared
even to give me a pinch of snuff or to answer
any of my anxious questions; now my
sentence was commuted, he bowed, chatted,
and handed me his snuff-box, which I refused
with contempt and indignation. But he
only shrugged his shoulders and stammered
an apology.

Now, one by one, the condemned, faint and