The palace or building, which was the seat of the tribunal, was divided into the _secreto_ and the outside rooms or apartments. It was expected to furnish lodgings for the inquisitors and, if spacious enough, for the other officials. The most important feature was the _carceles secretas_ or secret prison for those on trial, for it was necessary that they could be brought at any moment to the audience-chamber without being seen by any one. There was, of course, a torture-chamber, which seems to have generally been underground. The _secreto_ originally was merely a record-room in which the papers and documents were preserved. From the first these were guarded with jealous secrecy, not only on account of their importance in the trials but because their abstraction or destruction was so ardently desired by the kindred or accomplices of convicts. As early as 1485, Ferdinand, in his instructions to the tribunal of Saragossa, orders that no servant of any of the officials shall enter "lo secreto de la Inquisicion."[633] The Instructions of 1498 provide that the chest or chamber in which the papers are kept shall have three keys, two held by the _notarios del secreto_ and one by the fiscal, so that no one can take out a document save in the presence of the others, and no one shall enter it except the inquisitors, the notaries and the fiscal, rules substantially repeated in the Sicilian instructions of 1516. Among the derelictions of the Barcelona tribunal, reported in 1561 by Cervantes, was the neglect of this rule, leading, he said, to grave abuses.[634] The functions and extent of the secreto were gradually enlarged. In Mercader's Instructions of 1514, the money-chest with three keys was ordered to be kept in the secreto, a provision which became permanent.[635] When the rule was established of conducting the trials in profound secrecy, and a veil of impenetrable mystery was thrown around all the operations of the Inquisition, the audience-chamber was included in the secreto, as well as the offices occupied by the fiscal and secretaries. The door to it was secured by three locks having different keys and entrance was forbidden save to those officially privileged or summoned.[636] In 1645, it was discovered that there was danger in the notaries or secretaries bringing in their swords, for a prisoner when led to an audience might in his desperation seize one and give trouble, and they were consequently ordered in future to be left outside.[637] In the Valencia tribunal there was considerable excitement, in 1679, when the pages of the inquisitors got possession of the keys and had false ones made, with which they gained at will access to the sacred precincts, but no harm seems to have arisen from the boyish prank.[638] One feature of the audience-chamber was significant--a _celosía_ or lattice, behind which a witness could identify a prisoner, without being seen or recognized.[639] [Sidenote: _THE INQUISITORS_]