The Church must receive whatever credit may be due for its kindly intentions, though they sometimes worked out strangely. Almost always the heretic came off disastrously, but there were episodes of mildness for which it is not easy to account. When, at the end of the thirteenth century, an Inquisitor was murdered, the man who hired the assassins was merely ordered to present himself to the Pope and receive penance. Even his neglect to do this was visited by nothing worse than a mild order to arrest him if he could be found. We shall meet with more of this unaccountable clemency. The light penances imposed by the Inquisition were Prayers, Churchgoing, Discipline, Fasting, Pilgrimages, and Fines. As punishments these penances do not sound excessive, but, as interpreted by the elastic discretion of the Holy Office, they could make a penitent extremely ill at ease, and when several were combined in one sentence life became a heavy burden. During a long pilgrimage a man’s family might starve. In 1322 pilgrimages were imposed on three men who nearly twenty years before had seen some Waldenses in their father’s house without knowing that they were heretics. Fines naturally gave opportunities for extortion which only exceptional men were able to refrain from using. As already mentioned, the Inquisition appropriated the property of all persons sentenced for heresy. A man who died in 1252, before completing a five years’ pilgrimage, left an estate of twenty livres, and the Inquisitors promptly claimed the whole of this immense sum. Bail was simply another word for bribery, and extortion became a system exploited to the utmost by men who were sleeplessly on the look-out for plunder. The second grade of penance was the compulsory wearing of yellow crosses, sewn on to the clothing as an indication that the wearer had been condemned for heresy. This badge, which corresponded to the _san benito_ commonly used in Spain, was so great a disgrace that efforts were constantly made to avoid it; but though, for special reasons, permission was sometimes given to dispense with it, usually it was insisted upon, and escape from the vigilant eye of the Inquisition was impossible.