"But how is it that what you have confessed of yourself, and many other things which you now deny, are the result of the depositions of a great many witnesses?"--"I do not know if that is true or false, for I have not seen the writings of the trial; but if the witnesses have said that which is imputed to them, it is because they were placed in the same situation as I am. They do not love me better than I love myself; and I have certainly declared against myself both truth and falsehood." "What motive had you for declaring things injurious to yourself, if they were false?"--"I did not think it would be injurious to me; on the contrary, I expected to derive great advantages from it, because I saw that if I did not confess anything, I should be considered as impenitent, and the truth would lead me to the scaffold. I thought that falsehood would be most useful to me, and I found it so in two _autos-da-fé_." On the 6th of June Melchior Hernandez was informed that he must prepare for death on the following day. He was clothed in the habit of the persons condemned to be burnt, and a confessor was appointed for him. At two o'clock in the morning he demanded an audience, saying that he wished to acquit his conscience. An inquisitor, attended by a secretary, went to his cell; Melchior then declared "that, at the point of appearing before the tribunal of the Almighty, and without any hope of escaping from death by new delays, he thought himself bound to declare that he had never conversed with any person on the Mosaical Law; that all he had said on this subject was founded on the wish to preserve life, and the belief that his confessions were pleasing to the inquisitors; that he asked pardon of the persons implicated, that God might pardon him, and that no injury might be done to their honour and reputation." The inquisitor represented that he ought not to speak falsely, even from a motive of compassion for the denounced persons; that the declarations of the witnesses had every appearance of truth, and he therefore entreated him, in the name of God, not to increase his sins at the hour of death. Melchior merely repeated that all his former declarations were false. The royal judge condemned him to be strangled, and his body was afterwards burnt. Some doubts may be entertained of the sincerity of the last declarations of Melchior Hernandez, but the extreme irregularity of the proceedings of the tribunal must be evident to every one. The intervention of the Supreme Council proves that the same system was pursued in the other tribunals, since it approved of their proceedings, and exercised the rights of revocation and censure.