cell to give him breakfast, he was found pale and faint, with the blood flowing freely from a wound in his arm, made with a nail from his bedstead, under the impression that he was to be burnt, and he had to be carried to the solemnity in a sedan-chair. Llorente recounts a similar case, of which he was an eyewitness, in 1791, when a Frenchman named Michel Maffre des Rieux hanged himself in consequence of being thus kept in ignorance.[251] The object of the delay in thus communicating the sentence was to prevent appeals to the Suprema. We have seen how, in opposing appeals to Rome, the Inquisition and the monarchs argued that they were wholly superfluous, in view of the appellate jurisdiction of the inquisitor-general, who was always prompt to rectify injustice committed by the tribunals, but this nominal opportunity was rendered for the most part illusory by this device of withholding knowledge of the sentence until appeal was impossible. This came about by degrees. Originally it would seem that the tribunals exercised discretion as to withholding the sentence until the auto, although exceptions were rare. The Instructions of 1561, while admitting a right of appeal in some cases, nullified it by ordering, in such cases, the tribunals to send the proceedings in advance to the Suprema, without allowing the accused to know of it.[252] There evidently were contending influences, of justice on one side and convenience on the other, for in 1568 it was ordered that, in cases not of heresy, when the penalty was arbitrary, the culprit should be notified in advance of the auto de fe, and this was extended, in 1573, by instructions that, in cases admitting appeal, the parties should be notified in time to enable them to do so. This concession to justice caused trouble and, on April 11, 1577 the tribunals were ordered to report on the evils arising from it. Apparently the inquisitors reported adversely for, on September 18th, they were ordered to return to the former practice of not notifying culprits prior to the auto de fe.[253]