A few pages will be given to the transactions of the French with regard to myself, which I shall accurately detail, in order that no future historian may deceive the world by a false account. But before my departure from the Inquisition, there are two circumstances on which I shall dwell more at large, under the impression that those persons for whom I chiefly write, will be greatly interested in a minute account of all that took place on those occasions. I refer to my examination before the Judge of the Inquisition, and my conference with the Theologian of the same establishment, who was sent to endeavour by his arguments to bring me back to the Church of Rome. How such an idea ever got into their heads I cannot imagine. They knew that I had abjured their system in consequence of a thorough conviction of its falsity. They knew that for ten years I had studied the subject night and day. They were not ignorant that such attempts had been made before, and that they had always proved unsuccessful. Papal Rome had had to lament the defeat of many of her champions, who had leagued together to overcome me. I was greatly surprised to see this Theologian, and still more so to hear that he had been sent by the Cardinal Vicar, by order of the Pope. Our conference, then, which took place privately, in a corner of the rich saloon of Julio Romano, in the Castle of St. Angelo, is now destined to become public, and I shall with great satisfaction undertake the office of making it so, in order that not only all that passed between us may be known, but that the manner of it may also be understood.[2] The Romish priests always expect that persons placed in the Inquisition will lose courage, and become unable to exert any strength of mind. And this persuasion they naturally indulge in, from the established fact, that the major part of those who are incarcerated within its walls do become enfeebled, even to wasting away, and begin to implore compassion. But they do not call to mind how many others are to be found in the annals of the same Inquisition, who have displayed the most heroic fortitude, have resisted all the vain arguments of their fallen and corrupt Church; and, full of zeal, have opposed the truths of the Bible to their decrees, the Gospel to tradition, the true Word of God to the vain conceits of men.