"Out of Rome hath arisen a savage monster of such wondrous shape and hideous appearance that at the sound of its name all Europe trembles. Its carcass is of iron, tempered in deadly poison, and covered with scales of impenetrable steel. A thousand venom-dropping wings support it when it hovers over the terrified earth. Its nature is that of the ravening lion and the snake of the African desert. Its bite is more terrible than that of the hugest monster. The sound of its voice slays more speedily than the deadly glance of the basilisk. From its eyes and mouth stream fire and ceaseless lightnings. It feeds on human bodies, and its drink is human tears and blood. It excels the eagle in the speed of its flight, and where it broods its black shadow spreads the gloom of night. Though the sun shine never so clearly, the darkness of Egypt follows in its track. Wheresoever it flies, every green meadow that it touches, every fruitful tree on which it sets foot, withers and dies. With its destroying fangs it roots up every herb that grows, and with the poison of its breath it blasts the circle in which it moves to a desert like that of Syria, where no green thing grows, no grass-blade sprouts." Thus did a Jewish poet, Samuel Usque, himself singed by its flames, depict the Inquisition. The inscription which the poet Dante placed upon the portal of Hell-- "All hope abandon, ye who enter here!" would have been even more suitable to the dungeons of the Holy Inquisition, which the cruel energy of Torquemada now established in nearly all the great towns of Spain. He at once instituted three new tribunals in Cordova, Jaen and Villareal (Ciudad-Real), and, later on, one in Toledo, the capital of southern Spain. The offices of the Inquisition were entirely filled by him with hypocritical and fanatical Dominicans, whom he made the tools of his will, so that they worked like an organism with a single head, ready at his word to perpetrate the most hideous barbarities with a composure that cannibals might have envied. In those days Spain was filled with the putrefaction of the dungeon, the stench of corpses, and the crackling of the flames in which were burning innocent Jews, forced into a faith the falsity of which was demonstrated by every action of the servants of the church. A wail of misery piercing bone and marrow went through that lovely land; but their Catholic majesties paralyzed the arm of every man prompted by mercy to put a stop to the butchery. At the court itself there sat a commission on the affairs of Jewish Christians, of which the inquisitor-general held the presidency.