king
him on either hand sat two mute cowled figures to do the office of
amanuenses.

Away on the right, where the shadows were but faintly penetrated by the
rays of the torches, stood an engine of wood somewhat of the size and
appearance of the framework of a couch, but with stout straps of leather
to pinion the patient, and enormous wooden screws upon which the frame
could be made to lengthen or contract. From the ceiling grey ropes
dangled from pulleys, like the tentacles of some dread monster of
cruelty.

One glance into that gloomy part of the chamber was enough for me.

Repressing a shudder, I faced the inquisitor, and thereafter kept my
eyes upon him to avoid the sight of those other horrors. And he was
horror enough for any man in my circumstances to envisage.

He was very fat, with a shaven, swarthy face and the dewlap of an ox.
In that round fleshliness his eyes were sunken like two black buttons,
malicious through their very want of expression. His mouth was
loose-lipped and gluttonous and cruel.

When he spoke, the deep rumbling quality of his voice was increased by
the echoes of that vaulted place.

"What is your name?" he said.

"I am Agostino d'Anguissola, Lord of Mondolfo and..."

"Pass over your titles," he boomed. "The Holy Office takes no account of
worldly rank. What is your age?"

"I am in my twenty-first year."

"Benedicamus Dominum," he commented, though I could not grasp the
appositeness of the comment. "You stand accused, Agostino d'Anguissola,
of sacrilege and of defiling holy things. What have you to say? Do you
confess your guilt?"

"I am so far from confessing it," I answered, "that I have yet to
learn what is the nature of the sacrilege with which I am charged. I am
conscious of no such sin. Far from it, indeed..."

"You shall be informed," he interrupted, imposing silence upon me by a
wave of his fat hand; and heaving his vast bulk sideways--"Read him the
indictment," he bade one of the amanuenses.

From the depths of a vizored cowl came a thin, shrill voice:

"The Holy Office has knowledge that Agostino d'Anguissola did for a
space of some six months, during the winter of the year of Our Blessed
Lord 1544, and the spring of the year of Our Blessed Lord 1545, pursue
a fraudulent and sacrilegious traffic, adulterating, for moneys which
he extorted from the poor and the faithful, things which are holy, and
adapting them to his own base purposes. It is charged against him