therefore could not pleasure them, whereat they left me alone for a little while. Now after some long time there come into the gallery several persons bearing a great pile of garments, whereof they did distribute to every prisoner. And I saw that the habits given to those outside the chamber were those yellow gowns, with a red cross before and behind upon them, that I had seen the _fetisceros_ wear that wrought at the powder-mills, and that they call _sambenitos_. But coming into our chamber among us, they brought forth another kind of gown, that was fashioned of a grey stuff, and was painted with firebrands, flames, and devils, and on each man’s gown his own portrait, depicted with great taste, and very natural, but all encompassed with flames, and this habit they call a _samarra_. And my _samarra_ I admired a long while before putting it on, which one of the priests seeing, he took occasion to rebuke me for my delay, saying-- “Ah, miserable heretic, think, as you contemplate this feeble picture, that within a very few hours your soul will be tormented in real flames, whose power you can’t conceive, and among devils to which these are nothing in hideousness and ferocity.” To which I answered him in a prodigious heat-- “Sir, I han’t neither asked nor desired your interference. I was but contemplating the curious work of your artists, though I could have wished that they testified more charity towards those that differ from ’em; but now I see from whom they learn their unkind imaginations.” “You are sharp and impudent with your tongue, young man,” said he, “and in a sorry state to await death,” and with that he passed on, forgetting that ’twas not my fault that I could not prepare myself for death quietly, as I had wished, but theirs, who disturbed me so soon as I had collected my thoughts. And now they did give to us caps called _carochas_, of a yellow colour and shaped like unto a loaf of sugar, and painted like the gowns with fire and devils, and after this they bade us sit down on the floor and wait in silence. Yet even here and at this moment there was still some kindness to be found, for the _alcaide_, that had always appeared to me but a surly fellow, came to the chamber where I was, bringing a provision of bread, together with raisins of the sun and figs, the which he did divide unto me and to as many of the rest as he could reach. And having eaten this, we remained sitting silent until the dawn, which happens in these climates about five o’clock in the morning.