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SECRET PRISONS OF THE INQUISITION.

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accounts for much of that low tone of morals and feeling which is obvious in Catholic countries. This iniquitous tribunal had three sorts of prisons, public, intermediary, and secret. The public ones confines persons

are those in which the holy office who, without being guilty of any crime against the faith, stand accused of some offence, the punishment of which belongs by privilege to, and is within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. The intermediary are destined for the reception of those servants of the holy office, who have committed some crime, or have been guilty of some fault, in the exercise of their functions, without being suspected of heresy. The secret prisons, which we were not allowed just now to visit, were those where heretics, or persons suspected of being heretics, were shut up; and where they could hold no communication except with the judges of the tribunal. What renders these prisons truly terrible is, that no one ever enters them without being eternally lost in public opinion. In Spain all kinds of infamy are inferior to this. In his own estimation and that of his countrymen, the galleyslave, condemned to wear iron on his limbs for life, is respectable, when compared with him, however innocent, who has inhabited those dens of infamy and shame. What must have been the reflections, what the agonies of spirit, endured by the miserable being consigned to those abodes of

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SUFFERINGS OF THE ACCUSED.

worse than death. During the winter months they were fifteen hours out of the twenty-four in utter darkness; for no prisoner was allowed to have light after four o'clock in the afternoon, or before seven in the morning: he was exposed to all the rigours of cold, in a retreat where the cheerful blaze of a fire was never seen; and to aggravate these bodily sufferings, he was conscious that his name was blasted for ever. The minds of the unhappy prisoners, we are told, became a prey to so inexpressible a dejection, that they settled into a hopeless and sullen despondency; a despair so strong and intense, that it is said the rack itself was unable to rouse them out of it. I will not shock you, my children, by a detail of the horrors of the torture. While it was inflicted in the most inhuman manner, two inquisitors and a secretary were present; which last person took down, not only all the forms of accusation, and all the answers made by the accused; but noted also every sigh, every tear, and every exclamation of the prisoner: thus leaving, unconsciously, a record against themselves, that will no doubt appear in that day, when we are told we must give an account of even every idle word."

"How could human nature bear such inflictions?" said Edward: it seems impossible.

"It is indeed wonderful; and the mixture of strength and weakness has sometimes excited in my

MOTIVES FOR MAKING ACCUSATIONS.

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mind a deeper tribute of admiration than I have felt for those who never shrunk from the deadly pangs they were compelled to endure. We hear of those who, in the midst of unendurable pain, have recanted their religious opinions, yet twenty-four hours after refused to sign that recantation. This always has struck me as great courage; for they have experienced the evil they yet venture again to endure for truth's sake. The instances of fortitude are at all times wonderful in the victims of the Inquisition, because the whole system is addressed to the mind as well as the body. Before corporeal torture is inflicted, the accused are made to taste all the bitterness of mental anguish, and all the sickness of hope delayed, before pain is inflicted."

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They must have some other motive, surely, sir. It cannot be even a fanatic love of truth that led them to the commission of such crimes."

"No, certainly not. When a man was arrested on a charge of heresy his estate was confiscated: when convicted, it was sold for the benefit of the Inquisition, whose retainers were paid out of it. Nothing was easier than a charge of heresy; a crime always difficult to define and of very arbitrary construction. The inquisitors had always in their pay a 'set of miscreants, ready to denounce any one pointed out to them; and in nine cases out of ten, the plunder to be obtained was

148 FATAL INFLUENCE OF THE TRIBUNAL.

the prime, or rather sole motive of the prosecution. They prevented all improvement, and they banished knowledge from the kingdom; and cherished, in the ill-fated nation over which they tyrannised, the most odious of all vices-domestic treachery. Of them may we truly exclaim, in the language of Scripture: O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.'"

MANNERS AND FASHIONS OF MADRID. 149

CHAPTER XI.

MANNERS AND FASHIONS OF MADRID.

BEING now comfortably settled in lodgings, they set themselves seriously to sight-seeing. One of their favourite places of resort was the botanical garden, to which, by the letters of Dr. Curtis, they had a constant access. It is more frequented by gentlemen than ladies, in consequence of a regulation of which they were unable to understand the motive. Every lady on entering must throw aside her mantilla; it is not sufficient to let it fall on her neck, it must hang on her arm. The Spanish ladies consider this obligation as amounting to a prohibition: for the proper arrangement of a mantilla is no trifling or easy task, and not to be accomplished without the aid of a mirror: she, therefore, rarely exposes herself to a discipline which might send her to the Prado with her mantilla awry.

Such was their morning's amusement: and once they went to the theatre; where, necessarily, most of the wit of the play was lost upon them, though they had sufficient amusement in looking round the house, and remarking its arrangement, so dif

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