e and in character, they were said, in the soft language of the
Inquisition, to be _reconciled_.

As these unfortunate persons were remanded, under a strong guard, to
their prisons, all eyes were turned on the little company of martyrs,
who, clothed in the ignominious garb of the _san benito_, stood waiting
the sentence of the judges,--with cords round their necks, and in their
hands a cross, or sometimes an inverted torch, typical of their own
speedy dissolution. The interest of the spectators was still further
excited, in the present instance, by the fact that several of these
victims were not only illustrious for their rank, but yet more so for
their talents and virtues. In their haggard looks, their emaciated
forms, and too often, alas! their distorted limbs, it was easy to read
the story of their sufferings in their long imprisonment, for some of
them had been confined in the dark cells of the Inquisition much more
than a year. Yet their countenances, though haggard, far from showing
any sign of weakness or fear, were lighted up with a glow of holy
enthusiasm, as of men prepared to seal their testimony with their blood.

When that part of the process showing the grounds of their conviction
had been read, the grand-inquisitor consigned them to the hands of the
corregidor of the city, beseeching him to deal with the prisoners _in
all kindness and mercy_;[442] a honeyed, but most hypocritical phrase,
since no choice was left to the civil magistrate, but to execute the
terrible sentence of the law against heretics, the preparations for
which had been made by him a week before.[443]

The whole number of convicts amounted to thirty, of whom sixteen were
_reconciled_, and the remainder _relaxed_ to the secular arm,--in other
words, turned over to the civil magistrate for execution. There were few
of those thus condemned who, when brought to the stake, did not so far
shrink from the dreadful doom that awaited them as to consent to
purchase a commutation of it by confession before they died; in which
case they were strangled by the _garrote_, before their bodies were
thrown into the flames.

Of the present number there were only two whose constancy triumphed to
the last over the dread of suffering, and who refused to purchase any
mitigation of it by a compromise with conscience. The names of these
martyrs should be engraven on the record of history.

One of them was Don Carlos de Seso, a noble Florentine, who had stood