The majority of the historians who have been consulted, agree in stating that the different degrees of torture formerly in use were five in number. First, The threatening of the torture. Secondly, The steps taken when conducting the prisoner to the place where the torture is inflicted. Thirdly, Stripping and binding the prisoner. Fourthly, Elevation on the pulley. And lastly, Squassation, or the sudden precipitation and suspension of the body. To these we may add, the wooden horse, the thumb screws, the iron slipper, &c. The measure of severity with which the prisoner is to be tortured, is pointed out by the Inquisitor in the terms in which he is pleased to pronounce sentence. If he says, "Let the prisoner be interrogated by torture," he is merely hoisted up on the rope, but does not undergo the squassation. If he says, "Let him be tortured," he must undergo the squassation once, being first interrogated while hanging in the air. If he orders him "to be well tortured," he must suffer two squassations. If he adds the expression, "severely tortured," he is subjected to undergo within an hour three different squassations. If "very severely," it is done with twistings and additional weights suspended to his feet. And if "very severely, even unto death," the prisoner is in imminent danger of his life. "Should the prisoner, in consequence of the agony which he suffers, be forced to make any confession, that confession is immediately taken down by the notary; and if he adheres to it at his next examination, which commonly takes place in twenty-four hours after the infliction of the torture, and at the same time acknowledges his guilt, he is condemned, it is true, as a heretic upon his own confession, but is represented as penitent, and is restored to the bosom of the Church; though not without undergoing certain punishments, more or less severe, and certain painful varieties of penance.[15] But, should he either retract his confession, or persist in his heresy, he is delivered over to the secular power, and is burnt alive at the next _auto-da-fé_." However unwilling we are to shock the feelings of the reader by any further description of the various kinds of torture inflicted by the Inquisition, it is necessary, in a history like the present, to give some more particular account of this part of the procedure of that infamous court. The following particulars relative to the torture, which are given by Puigblanch, are stated in a manner as unrevolting as possible, although, on such a subject, no words which describe this barbarous mode of Inquisitorial punishment can be used, without giving pain to every mind not altogether destitute of humanity.