The prisoners are confined in separate cells, which are not only small, but contain no other furniture except a wooden bed stead, a table, one chair, and sometimes none. There are usually two rows of cells, built over each other. The upper rows are lighted by means of a small iron grate, and the lower are perfectly dark. In each cell there are placed two pots of water, one to wash in, and the other to drink. The treatment of the prisoners varies according to their rank; their allowance sometimes amounting to no more than three half-pence or two pence a day. The under rows of cells are appropriated for heretics. There, in solitude and silence, they never see a human being except their keeper. Thus persons the most nearly related to each other, may be confined in contiguous cells without knowing it; and the merciless turnkeys are constantly on the watch, to prevent the utterance of any sound, lest it should occasion the discovery of some secret. If a person bemoans himself, or bewails his misfortune, or prays to God with an audible voice, he is instantly silenced. As persons may know one another by their cough, as well as by their articulate voice, no one is allowed even this expression of his misery, in the dungeons of the Inquisition. Limborch relates the following instance of such unheard of barbarity, which, he says, he had from several persons. "A prisoner in the Inquisition coughed; the jailers came to him, and admonished him to forbear coughing, because it was unlawful to make any noise in that house. He answered that it was not in his power to forbear. They admonished him, however, a second time, to forbear it, and because he did not, they stripped him naked, and cruelly beat him; this increased his cough, for which they beat him so often, that at last he died through the pain and anguish of his stripes!" Very soon after the accused is conducted to the Inquisition, he is brought forth from his cell and examined. The place where he appears before the Inquisitors is called the table of the holy office. At the further end of it there is placed a crucifix, raised up almost as high as the ceiling. In the middle of the room stands a table, at the end of which, nearest the crucifix, sits the secretary or notary of the Inquisition. The culprit is brought in by the beadle, with his head, arms, and feet naked, and is followed by one of the keepers. His attendants conduct him to the door of the chamber of audience, which he enters alone, and is ordered to sit down on a bench at the other end of the table, directly opposite the notary. The Inquisitor sits on his right hand. On the table near the culprit lies a missal, or book of the Gospels, on which he is ordered to lay his hand, and swear that he will declare truth, and keep secresy.