The shrouded green cross was placed upon the altar, the tapers were lighted, the thurible kindled, and as a cloud of incense ascended and spread its sweetly pungent odour the Mass began. At the conclusion a sermon of the Faith was preached, wherein the sins of the accused were denounced, and those who had incurred the penalty of being abandoned to the secular arm were exhorted fervently to repent and make their peace with Holy Mother Church that they might save their souls from the damnation into which, otherwise, it was the Inquisition’s business to hurry them. As the preacher ceased, the notaries of the Holy Office of Toledo proceeded to the business of reading out the crime of each accused, dwelling in detail upon the particular form which his Judaizing was known to have taken. As the name of each was called, he was brought forward, and placed upon a stool,[141] whilst the reading of the lengthy sentence took place. It requires no great imaginative effort to form a mental picture of these proceedings, and of the poor livid wretch, horror-stricken and bathed in the sweat of abject terror which that long-drawn agony must have extorted from the stoutest, sitting there, perhaps half-dazed already by the merciful hand of Nature, in the glaring August sun, under the stare of a thousand eyes, some pitiful, some hateful, some greedy of the offered spectacle. Or it might be some poor half-swooning woman, steadied by the attendant Dominicans, who seek to support her fainting courage, to mitigate her unutterable anguish with comfortless words that hold out the promise of pitiless mercy. And all this, _Christi nomine invocato!_ The reading of the sentence is at an end. It concludes with the formula that the Church, being unable to do more for the offender, casts him out and abandons him to the secular arm. Lastly comes the mockery of that intercession, _efficaciter_--to preserve the inquisitors from irregularity--that the secular justice shall so deal with him that his blood may not be shed, and that he may suffer no hurt in life or limb. Thereupon the doomed wretch is removed from the scaffold; the _alguaziles_ of the secular justiciary seize him; the Regidor mutters a few brief words of sentence, and he is thrust upon an ass and hurried away, out of the city to the burning-place of La Dehesa. A white cross has been raised in this field, where twenty-five stakes are planted with the faggots piled under each, and a mob of morbid sightseers surges, impatient to have the spectacle begin. The condemned is bound to the stake, and the Dominicans still continue their exhortations. They flaunt a crucifix before his dazed, staring eyes, and they call upon him to repent, confess, and save his soul from Eternal Hell. They do not leave him until the fire is crackling and the first cruel little tongues of bluish flame dart up through the faggots to lick the soles of his naked feet.