e same time, and put under the same regulations.
The inquisitors allow the torture to be used only three times, but
during those times it is so severely inflicted, that the prisoner either
dies under it, or continues always after a cripple, and suffers the
severest pains upon every change of weather. We shall give an ample
description of the severe torments occasioned by the torture, from the
account of one who suffered it the three respective times, but happily
survived the cruelties he underwent.

At the first time of torturing, six executioners entered, stripped him
naked to his drawers, and laid him upon his back on a kind of stand,
elevated a few feet from the floor. The operation commenced by putting
an iron collar round his neck, and a ring to each foot, which fastened
him to the stand. His limbs being thus stretched out, they wound two
ropes round each thigh; which ropes being passed under the scaffold,
through holes made for that purpose, were all drawn tight at the same
instant of time, by four of the men, on a given signal.

It is easy to conceive that the pains which immediately succeeded were
intolerable; the ropes, which were of a small size, cut through the
prisoner's flesh to the bone, making the blood to gush out at eight
different places thus bound at a time. As the prisoner persisted in not
making any confession of what the inquisitors required, the ropes were
drawn in this manner four times successively.

The manner of inflicting the second torture was as follows: they forced
his arms backwards so that the palms of his hands were turned outward
behind him; when, by means of a rope that fastened them together at the
wrists, and which was turned by an engine, they drew them by degrees
nearer each other, in such a manner that the back of each hand touched,
and stood exactly parallel to each other. In consequence of this violent
contortion, both his shoulders became dislocated, and a considerable
quantity of blood issued from his mouth. This torture was repeated
thrice; after which he was again taken to the dungeon, and the surgeon
set the dislocated bones.

Two months after the second torture, the prisoner being a little
recovered, was again ordered to the torture-room, and there, for the
last time, made to undergo another kind of punishment, which was
inflicted twice without any intermission. The executioners fastened a
thick iron chain round his body, which crossing at the breast,
terminated at th