"After two months' imprisonment," goes on Carcel, "one Saturday, when, after my meagre prison dinner, I give my linen, as usual, to the gaolers to send to the wash, they will not take it and a great cold breath whispers at my heart--to-morrow is the _auto da fé_. When, immediately after the vespers at the cathedral, they ring for matins, which they never do but when rejoicing on the eve of a great feast, I know that my horrid suspicions are right. Was I glad at my escape from this living tomb, or was I paralysed by fear, at the pile perhaps already hewn and stacked for my wretched body? I know not. I was torn in pieces by the devils that rack the brains of unhappy men. I refused my next meal, but, contrary to their wont, they pressed it more than usual. Was it to give me strength to bear my torture? Do God's eyes not reach to the prisons of the Inquisition? "I am just falling into a sickly, fitful sleep, worn out with conjecturing, when, about eleven o'clock at night, the great bolts of my cell grind and jolt back and a party of gaolers in black, in a flood of light, so that they looked like demons on the borders of heaven, come in. "The alcaide throws down by my pallet a heap of clothes, tells me to put them on and hold myself ready for a second summons. I have no tongue to answer, as they light my lamp, leave me and lock the door behind them. Such a trembling seizes me for half an hour, that I cannot rise and look at the clothes which seem to me shrouds and winding sheets. I rise at last, throw myself down before the black cross I had smeared with charcoal on the wall, and commit myself, as a miserable sinner, into God's hands. I then put on the dress, which consists of a tunic with long, loose sleeves and hose drawers, all of black serge, striped with white. "At two o'clock in the morning the wretches came and led me into a long gallery where nearly two hundred men, brought from their various cells, all dressed in black, stood in a long silent line against the wall of the long, plain vaulted, cold corridor where, over every two dozen heads, swung a high brass lamp. We stood silent as a funeral train. The women, also in black, were in a neighbouring gallery, far out of our sight. By sad glimpses down a neighbouring dormitory I could see more men dressed in black, who, from time to time, paced backwards and forwards. These I afterwards found were men doomed also to be burnt, not for murder--no, but for having a creed unlike that of the Jesuits. Whether I was to be burnt or not I did not know, but I took courage, because my dress was like that of the rest and the monsters could not dare to put two hundred men at once into one fire, though they did hate all who love doll-idols and lying miracles.