The situation of the accused [says Lea] was helpless. Standing up alone before the stern admonitions of the trained and pitiless judge; brooding in his cell, cut off from all external communication, during weeks or months of interval between his audiences; apparently forgotten, but living in constant uncertainty of being at any moment summoned to appear; torturing his mind as to the impression which his utterances might have made, or the deductions drawn from his admissions or denials ... it required an exceptionally resolute temperament to endure the prolonged strain, with the knowledge that the opponent in the deadly game always had in reserve the terrible resource of the torture chamber.[4] Footnote 4: Lea, _History of Spanish Inquisition_, ii., p. 483. Death, imprisonment for life, scourging, a loss of property, and public ignominy: these were the main penalties inflicted. Since the object of the Inquisition was to impress the populace with a terror of heresy and its consequences, care was taken that the _Auto-de-Fe_, or “Act of Faith,” regarded by many as a manifestation of the last Judgment, should be as widely seen as possible. Amid the jeers or horror of the spectators, and the low chanting of attendant priests the condemned marched from their prison to their death, clad in “sanbenitos” or the coarse woollen garment of the penitent. Across their breasts and shoulders were embroidered, for those who were reconciled to the Faith, crosses; for the obstinate heretic, flames and devils, symbols of the everlasting torment that awaited his soul, when earthly judges had finished their task. The “Conversos,” terrified by the storm that had at last broken over their heads, sought shelter where they could. Some took advantage of the Edicts of Grace, and, caught in the toils of the demand that their confession must be “full,” or it would avail them nothing, accused in their panic neighbours and even relations, that their own repentance might seem the more sincere. Others, leaving their lands and houses to pay toll for their unorthodoxy, fled to Portugal, Italy, or France. Pulgar tells us that the number of houses deserted in Seville, Cordova, and the other cities of Andalusia amounted to over four thousand. And although [he adds] through the exodus of this race, a great part of the land was depopulated, and word was brought to the Queen that trade was diminishing, yet she, esteeming little the loss of her revenues and as of great value the purity of her dominions, declared that, putting aside her own interests, she would seek to cleanse the land from this sin of heresy; because she believed that thus she fulfilled God’s service and her own. And the supplications that were made to her on this matter could not turn her from her purpose....