Penance became far more severe in the third grade, which was imprisonment for life. A comprehensive penalty of this character was incurred by every one who did not come forward within the time specified by the Edict of Grace, confess his own sins, and denounce those of others. The Inquisition of Toulouse, between 1246 and 1248, records 192 cases, of which 127 were of perpetual imprisonment, 6 for ten years, 16 for an indefinite term in the discretion of the Church, and the remaining 43 were of absentees. The Council of Narbonne, in 1244, made the sentence invariably for life. The confinement was solitary; the diet consisted of bread and water, and in the harsher sentence the penitent was chained by the feet, sometimes by the hands as well, and, in extreme cases, to the wall of a dark, noisome dungeon. It is not surprising that prisoners did not attain a green old age. The Inquisition reserved the right, in the exercise of its discretion, to mitigate or re-impose its penalties. This right was frequently used, especially in regard to the wearing of crosses; but seldom did the prisoner find his punishment any the lighter. If he had the unusual good fortune to be released, he might, for the slightest lapse, be punished again, and this time without mercy and without the formality of a fresh trial. Every victim relinquished by the Holy Office was a ticket-of-leave man, liable at any moment to utter ruin. He could never feel sure that something might not be discovered, perhaps a youthful indiscretion of his grandfather’s, which would require his appearance before the dread Tribunal, or that for some unguarded act or expression he might not bring himself under the most effective of all excommunications--that of the Holy Inquisition. _Confiscation._ By decree of Innocent III in 1215 and the Bull of Innocent IV in 1252, confiscation of the property of heretics and their children was made a necessary penalty, and all temporal rulers were required to enforce it. Of the proceeds one-third was to go to the State, one-third to the Papacy, and one-third to the Inquisition. Each party, as a matter of course, tried to cheat the others; but the wily Inquisitors almost invariably obtained the lion’s share of the spoil, which was, nominally at any rate, devoted to the furtherance of their own method of propagating the Gospel. Between them the victim had as much chance of escape as a mouse in a trap. The Church had some difficulty in getting confiscation sanctioned by the State, but it succeeded.