If he has confessed, wrought upon by spiritual or physical terror, the Dominican makes a sign, and the executioner steps behind the stake and rapidly strangles the doomed man. If his physical fears have not sufficed to conquer his religious convictions, if he remains firm in his purpose to die lingeringly, horribly, a martyr for the faith that he believes to be the only true one, the Dominican withdraws at last, baffled by this “wicked stubbornness,” and the wretch is left to endure the terrible agony of death by slow fire. Meanwhile, under that limpid sky--_Christi nomine invocato_--the ferocious work of the Faith goes on; accused succeeds accused to hear his or her sentence read, until the last of the twenty-five victims has been surrendered to the tireless arm of the secular justice. In the meadows of La Dehesa there is such a blaze of the fires of the Faith, that it might almost seem that the Christians have been avenging upon their enemies those human torches which an enemy of Christianity is alleged to have lighted once in Rome. Six mortal hours, Orozco informs us, were consumed in that ghastly business,[142] for the Court of the Holy Office must in all things proceed with stately and pompous leisureliness, with that calm equanimity enjoined by the “Directorium”--_simpliciter et de plano_--lest by haste it should fall into the unpardonable offence of irregularity. Not until noon did the proceedings conclude with the hurrying away to La Dehesa of the last of those twenty-five. The inquisitors and their followers descended at length from their scaffold, and withdrew to the Casa Santa to rest them from these arduous labours of propagating Christianity. There was more to be done upon the morrow--very important business, demanding an entirely different ceremonial, wherefore it had been set apart and allotted a day to itself. The accused on this occasion were only two, but they were two clerics. One was the parish priest of Talavera; the other occupied the distinguished position of a royal chaplain. Both had been found guilty of Judaizing. They were conducted to the Auto in full canonicals, as if about to celebrate Mass, each carrying his veiled chalice. Led to the scaffold of the condemned, they found themselves confronted from the other scaffold not only by the inquisitors and their attendants and familiars, but further by the Bishop, who was attended by two Jeronymites--the Abbot of the Convent of St. Bernard and the Prior of the Convent of Sisla. The notary of the Holy Office read out the crimes of the accused, and pronounced them cast out from the Church. Thereupon each was brought in turn before the Bishop, who proceeded to degrade him, since the law could not without sacrilege lay violent hands upon an ecclesiastic.