“This morning, the 28th, after breakfast, my host went to dress for the Holy Office, and soon returned in his inquisitorial robes. He said he would go half an hour before the usual time, for the purpose of showing me the Inquisition. I fancied that his countenance was more severe than usual; and that his attendants were not so civil as before. The truth was, the _midnight scene_ was still on my mind. The Inquisition is about a quarter of a mile distant from the convent, and on our arrival at the place the inquisitor said to me, as we were ascending the steps of the outer stair, that he hoped I should be satisfied with a transient view of the Inquisition, and that I would retire whenever he should desire it. I took this as a good omen, and followed my conductor with tolerable confidence. “He led me first to the great hall of the Inquisition. We were met at the door by a number of well-dressed persons, who, I afterwards understood, were the familiars and attendants of the Holy Office. They bowed very low to the inquisitor, and looked with surprise at me. The great hall is the place in which the prisoners are marshalled for the procession of the _auto da fé_. At the procession described by Dellon, in which he himself walked bare-foot, clothed with the painted garment, there were upwards of one hundred and fifty prisoners. I traversed this hall for some time with a slow step, reflecting on its former scenes; the inquisitor walked by my side in silence. I thought of the fate of the multitude of my fellow-creatures who had passed through this place, condemned by a tribunal of their fellow-sinners--their bodies devoted to the flames, and their souls to perdition; and I could not help saying to him, ‘Would not the holy church wish, in her mercy, to have those souls back again, that she might allow them a little further probation?’ The inquisitor answered nothing, but beckoned me to go with him to a door at one end of the hall. By this door he conducted me to some small rooms, and thence to the spacious apartments of the chief-inquisitor. Having surveyed these, he brought me back again to the great hall, and I thought he seemed now desirous that I should depart. ‘Now, father,’ said I, ‘lead me to the dungeons below; I want to see the captives.’ ‘No,’ said he, ‘that cannot be.’ I now began to suspect that it had been in the mind of the inquisitor, from the beginning, to show me only a certain part of the Inquisition, in the hope of satisfying my inquiries in a general way. I urged him with earnestness, but he steadily resisted, and seemed to be offended, or rather agitated, by my importunity. I intimated to him plainly, that the only way to do justice to his own assertions and arguments, regarding the present state of the Inquisition, was to show me the prisons and the captives. I should then describe only what I saw; but now the subject was left in awful obscurity. ‘Lead me down,’ said I, ‘to the inner building, and let me