tion, he was brought a prisoner to Valladolid,
and condemned to the stake. The cords which bound him having rapidly
been consumed, he leaped unconsciously on to the stage where the friars
were confessing some who had recanted at the last moment. The friars
immediately collected round him, and urged him to retract his errors.
Looking at the unhappy penitents who were risking their salvation to
escape a few moments' suffering, and then at the noble De Seso, standing
unmoved amid the rising flames, he walked deliberately back to the
stake, exclaiming, "I will die like De Seso." More fuel was brought,
and he was quickly in the joy of his Lord.

Numbers bore testimony to "the truth as it is in Jesus" by dying
fearlessly like De Seso. At the same time, eight females, of
irreproachable character, some of them of high rank, were burned alive;
among them Maria Gomez, who so nearly betrayed the Protestants during a
sudden fit of insanity. Having recovered her senses she returned to the
Protestant faith, and soon was brought before the Inquisitors. She
suffered with her three daughters and a sister. So hardened had the
populace become by similar scenes, that not a single expression of
sympathy escaped them as they thus witnessed the destruction of a whole
family. Year after year passed away, and the same horrors continued to
be enacted; the bloody-minded inquisitors being hounded on to their work
of death by the bigot king; that king who, it has truly been said, was
busily engaged in making Spain what she in a few years became, the
lowest and least influential among the nations of Europe; while as truly
was Elizabeth, by her wise measures, laying the foundation of England's
greatness and power.

CHAPTER NINE.

FREEDOM.

We must return once more to the unhappy Leonor de Cisneros. She was
seated on a rough bench in her dungeon beneath the halls of the
Inquisition. One gleam of light only was admitted by a small aperture,
leading into a courtyard, far above her head.

The gleam fell on her marble countenance, pale as that of one who has
ceased to breathe. Her once rich hair, now glistening like snow, hung
over her shoulders, while her figure was draped in the dark robe she was
doomed to wear. Heavy chains hung on her arms, which she could with
difficulty lift to her head, whenever she strove to press her hands upon
her burning brow. Even the agony of mind and body which she had endured
had scarcely dimmed her b