taries, and above all, by the fathers of the faith, moving "with
slow pace, and profound gravity, truly triumphing as becomes the
principal generals of that great victory."[11]

[Footnote 11: Gonsalvius, p. 135.]

As the sacred banner of the inquisition advanced, the countless throng
sunk on their knees before it; they bowed their faces to the very
earth as it passed, and then slowly rose again, like a great
undulating billow. A murmur of tongues prevailed as the prisoners
approached, and eager eyes were strained, and fingers pointed, to
distinguish the different orders of penitents, whose habits denoted
the degree of punishment they were to undergo. But as those drew near
whose frightful garb marked them as destined to the flames, the noise
of the rabble subsided; they seemed almost to hold in their breath;
filled with that strange and dismal interest with which we contemplate
a human being on the verge of suffering and death.

It is an awful thing--a voiceless, noiseless multitude! The hushed and
gazing stillness of the surrounding thousands, heaped on walls, and
gates, and roofs, and hanging, as it were, in clusters, heightened the
effect of the pageant that moved drearily on. The low murmuring of the
priests could now be heard in prayer and exhortation, with the faint
responses of the prisoners, and now and then the voices of the choir
at a distance, chanting the litanies of the saints.

The faces of the prisoners were ghastly and disconsolate. Even those
who had been pardoned, and wore the Sanbenito, or penitential garment,
bore traces of the horrors they had undergone. Some were feeble and
tottering, from long confinement; some crippled and distorted by
various tortures; every countenance was a dismal page, on which might
be read the secrets of their prison-house. But in the looks of those
condemned to death, there was something fierce and eager. They seemed
men harrowed up by the past, and desperate as to the future. They were
anticipating, with spirits fevered by despair, and fixed and clenched
determination, the vehement struggle with agony and death which they
were shortly to undergo. Some cast now and then a wild and anguished
look about them, upon the shining day; the "sun-bright palaces," the
gay, the beautiful world, which they were soon to quit for ever; or a
glance of sudden indignation at the thronging thousands, happy in
liberty and life, who seemed, in contemplating their frightful
situation, to e