staggering, were brought in to hear their
sentence, which they did with a frightened
vacancy inconceivably touching. A devil
would have shed tears to see them; but the
Inquisitors were gossiping among themselves
and scarcely looked at them; so surfeited
were these priests with their enemies' blood.

Every sentence ended with the same cold
mechanical formula: That the holy office,
being unhappily unable to pardon the prisoners,
on account of their relapse and
impenitence, found itself obliged to punish them
with all the rigour of earthly law, and therefore
delivered them with regret to the hands
of secular justice, praying it to use clemency
and mercy towards the wretched men; saving
their souls by the punishment of their bodies,
and recommending death, but not the effusion
of blood. Hypocrites!

At the word blood, the justice hangmen
stepped forward and took possession of their
bodies; the alcaid first striking each of them
on the chest, to show that they were now
abandoned to the rope and fire.

A month before this auto-da-fé, the ministers
of the Inquisition preceded by their
banner, gorgeous and luminous with sacred
symbols, had gone in cavalcade from the
Palace of the Holy Office to the Cathedral
Square and proclaimed the ceremony with
drums, trumpets, and clashing of brass, to
the great crowd that thronged to hear the
good news.

Our present auto-da-fé was to celebrate the
king's marriage, and was to be followed by
great bull fights. They had erected in the
square a great theatre, fifty feet long, raised
to a level with the king's balcony. All round
ran an amphitheatre of thirty steps, for the
Council of the Inquisition and the king's
ministers. Above these, and higher than the
king's seat, was the Grand Inquisitor's place,
under a gilt and crimson dais. On the left
of the theatre was a second amphitheatre,
where the criminals sat and trembled. The
fire shone on their pale faces. In the midst
was a smaller scaffold, with two cages, for
more penned-up criminals, to hear their
sentences in. There were in front of this, three
special chairs, for the preachers and readers
of the sentences; and near these chairs was
a temporary altar, hung with black.

The king had the queen on his left hand,
and the queen's mother on his right. The
court ladies filled the rest of the balcony;
which, with their flowers and dresses, seemed
as if heaped with nosegays. There were also
separate seats for the ambassadors, the city
judges, and the people.

The procession consisted of, first, one
hundred charcoal men, armed with pike and
musket, and laden with billets of wood; then
the Dominicans, carrying a white cross;
then the Duke of Medina Cœli, bearing, as is
the hereditary privilege of his family, the
great red damask banner of the Inquisition,
which has on one side the arms of Spain, and
on the other a naked sword thrust through a
laurel crown. Next came a green cross
muffled in black, followed by nobles and
Familiars of the Inquisition dressed in robes,
adorned with white and black crosses, edged
with gold. The train was closed by fifty
halberdiers, or Guards of the Inquisition, clad
in white and black, and commanded by the
hereditary Protector of the Inquisition in the
Archbishopric of Seville.

The standard and cross were fixed above
the royal seat, and the Dominicans, who had
been all night singing hymns and thirsting
for our blood, drew up in line, as the king
and ladies at that moment appeared in the
balconies, in a blaze of colour and splendour,
like a sun-burst.

This was at eight o'clock. The charcoal-burners
were placed on the left of the king's
box, the guard on the right. The great
pasteboard effigies were placed prominently
at one end of the amphitheatre. Next filed in,
sad and slow, the hundred men condemned
to the fire; cords round their necks, the
three-feet-high flame-coloured mitres on their
heads; their feet bare; the torches shaking
in their trembling hands.

Next, each led between two familiars,
came the commuted; and, last of all, the
innocent. Some of the condemned had gags
in their mouths, to prevent any outburst of
blasphemy, and they were each of them
surrounded by four or five friars, holding
crucifixes to their eyes, and exhorting them,
angrily and noisily, to repent.

Having passed under the king's balcony,
and then round the amphitheatre, they were
placed on the left hand of the amphitheatre,
between the familiars and the priests; who
exhorted them continually to repent.

Next arrived the banner of the parish of
Saint Sebastian, the Inquisition Council, the
Inquisitors, the Qualifiers, and a long
procession of secular and religious dignitaries,
who placed themselves on the right side of the
theatre, surrounding the Grand Inquisitor's
chair. Last of all came the Grand Inquisitor,
robed in violet, attended by the President of
the Council of Castille; and when he (the
archdevil) took his seat, the President bowed
and retired.

Then mass was again said, and the priest,
leaving the altar, sat down: upon which, the
Inquisitor, putting on pontifical robes and
mitre, bowed first to the altar, and then to
the king; and, ascending the steps of the
throne, a servitor bearing the cross, read
aloud the oath by which the King of Spain
had bound himself to protect at all hazards,
even to the loss of his kingdom, the Catholic
Faith, to extirpate heresy, and to support the
Inquisition. Then the king, taking off his
hat (the great sword held unsheathed by a
chamberlain at his left side), swore to observe
the oath.

The Inquisitor unrobed and resumed his
place, while the same oath was administered