there is no telling the
agony of zeal with which we work between two mortal adversaries, hoping
to make a friend of one of them! I had suffered enough already from the
Inquisition, but at this moment I would have crouched at the knees of
the Inquisitors,--I would have pleaded for the place of the meanest
official in their prison,--I would have supplicated for the loathsome
office of their executioner,--I would have encountered any thing that
the Inquisition could inflict, to be spared the horror of being imagined
the ally of the enemy of souls. To my distraction, I perceived that
every word I uttered, in all the agony of truth,--in all the hopeless
eloquence of a soul struggling with the fiends who are bearing it beyond
the reach of mercy, was disregarded. The judges appeared struck, indeed,
by the earnestness with which I spoke. They gave, for a moment, a kind
of instinctive credit to my words, extorted by terror; but, a moment
after, I could perceive that _I_, and not my communication, was the
object of that terror. They seemed to view me through a distorting
atmosphere of mystery and suspicion. They urged me, over and over again,
for further particulars,--for ulterior circumstances,--for something
that was in _their_ minds, but not in mine. The more pains they took to
construct their questions skilfully, the more unintelligible they became
to me. I had told all I knew, I was anxious to tell all, but I could not
tell more than I knew, and the agony of my solicitude to meet the object
of the judges, was aggravated in proportion to my ignorance of it. On
being remanded to my cell, I was warned, in the most solemn manner, that
if I neglected to watch, remember, and report every word uttered by the
extraordinary being, whose visits they tacitly acknowledged they could
neither prevent or detect, I might expect the utmost severity of the
holy office. I promised all this,--all that could be demanded, and,
finally, as the last proof I could give of my sincerity, I implored that
some one might be allowed to pass the night in my cell,--or, if that was
contrary to the rules of the Inquisition, that one of the guard might be
stationed in the passage communicating with my cell, to whom I could, by
a signal agreed on, intimate when this nameless being burst on me, and
his impious intrusion might be at once detected and punished. In
speaking thus, I was indulged with a privilege very unusual in the
Inquisition, where the prisoner is only to answer questions, but never
to speak unless when called on. My proposal, however, caused some
consultation; and it was with horror I found, on its termination, that
not one of the officials, even under the discipline of the Inquisition,
would undertake the task of watching at the door of _my_ cell. “I went back to it in an agony inexpressible. The more I had laboured to
clear myself, the more I had become involved. My only resource and
consolation was in a determination to obey, to the strictest letter, the
injunctions of the Inquisition. I kept myself studiously awake,--_he_
came not all that night. Towards the morning I slept,--Oh what a sleep
was mine!--the genii, or the demons of the place, seemed busy in the
dream that haunted me. I am convinced that a real victim of an _auto da
fe_ (so called) never suffered more during his horrible procession to
flames temporal and eternal, than I did during that dream. I dreamed
that the judgement had passed,--the bell had tolled,--and we marched out
from the prison of the Inquisition;--my crime was proved, and my
sentence determined, as an apostate monk and a _diabolical_ heretic. The
procession commenced,--the Dominicans went first, then followed the
penitents, arms and feet bare, each hand holding a wax taper, some with
_san benitos_, some without, all pale, haggard, and breathless, the hue
of their faces frightfully resembling that of their clay-coloured arms
and feet. Then followed those who had on their black dresses the _fuego
revolto_(11). Then followed--I saw _myself_; and this horrid tracing of
yourself in a dream,--this haunting of yourself by your own spectre,
while you still live, is perhaps a curse almost equal to your crimes
visiting you in the punishments of eternity. I saw myself in the garment
of condemnation, _the flames pointing upwards_, while the demons painted
on my dress were mocked by the demons who beset my feet, and hovered
round my temples. The Jesuits on each side of me, urged me to consider
the difference between these painted fires, and those which were about
to enwrap my writhing soul for an eternity of ages. All the bells of
Madrid seemed to be ringing in my ears. There was no light but a dull
twilight, such as one always sees in his sleep, (no man ever dreamed of
sun-light);--there was a dim and smoky blaze of torches in my eyes,
whose flames were soon to _be in my eyes_. I saw the stage before me,--I
was chained to the chair, amid the ringing of bells, the preaching of
the Jesuits, and the shouts of the multitude. A splendid amphitheatre
stood opposite,--the king and queen of Spain, and all the nobility and
hierarchy of the land, were there to see us burn. Our thoughts in dreams
wander; I had heard a story of an _auto da fe_, where a young Jewess,
not sixteen, doomed to be burnt alive, had prostrated herself before the
queen, and exclaimed, “Save me,--save me, do not let me burn, my only
crime is believing in the God of my fathers;”--the queen (I believe
Elizabeth of France, wife of Philip) wept, but the procession went on. Something like this crossed my dream. I saw the supplicant rejected; the
next moment the figure was that of my brother Juan, who clung to me,
shrieking, “Save me, save me.” The next moment I was chained to my chair
again,--the fires were lit, the bells rang out, the litanies were
sung;--my feet were scorched to a cinder,--my muscles cracked, my blood
and marrow hissed, my flesh consumed like shrinking leather,--the bones
of my legs hung two black withering and moveless sticks in the ascending
blaze;--it ascended, caught my hair,--I was crowned with fire,--my head
was a ball of molten metal, my eyes flashed and melted in their
sockets;--I opened my mouth, it drank fire,--I closed it, the fire was
within,--and still the bells rung on, and the crowd shouted, and the
king and queen, and all the nobility and priesthood, looked on, and we
burned, and burned!--I was a cinder body and soul in my dream. (11) _Flames reversed_, intimating that the criminal is not to be
  burned. “I awoke from it with the horrible exclamation--ever shrieked, never
heard--of those wretches, when the fires are climbing fast and
fell,--_Misericordia por amor di Dios!_ My own screams awoke me,--I was
in my prison, and beside me stood the tempter.