"Suddenly, as we look at each other with ghastly eyes, the great bell of the Giralda begins to boom with a funeral knell, long and slow. It was the signal of the gala day of the Holy Office, it was the signal for the people to come to the show. We are filed out one by one. As I pass the gallery in the great hall, I see the inquisitor, solemn and stern, in his black robes, throned at the gate. Beneath him is his secretary, with a list of the citizens of Seville in his wiry twitching hands. The room is full of the anxious frightened burghers, who, as their names are called and a prisoner passes through, move to his trembling side to serve as his godfather in the Act of Faith. The honest men shudder as they take their place in the horrible death procession. The time-serving smile at the inquisitor, and bustle forward. This is thought an honourable office and is sought after by hypocrites and suspected men afraid of the Church's sword.
"The procession commences with the Dominicans. Before them flaunts the banner of the order in glistening embroidery that burns in the sun and shines like a mirror, the frocked saint, holding a threatening sword in one hand, and in the other, an olive branch with the motto, 'Justitia et misericordia' (Justice and mercy). Behind the banner come the prisoners in their yellow scapulars, holding their lighted torches, their feet bleeding with the stones and their less frightened godfathers, gay in cloak and sword and ruff tripping along by their side, holding their plumed hats in their hands. The street and windows are crowded with careless eyes, and children are held up to execrate us as we pass to our torturing death. The auto da fé was always a holiday sight to the craftsmen and apprentices; it drew more than even a bull fight, because of the touch of tragedy about it. Our procession, like a long black snake, winds on, with its banners and crosses, its shaven monks and mitred bare-footed prisoners, through street after street, heralded by soldiers who run before to clear a way for us—to stop mules and clear away fruit-stalls, street-performers and their laughing audiences. We at last reach the Church of All the Saints, where, tired, dusty, bleeding and faint we are to hear mass.
"The church has a grave-vault aspect and is dreadfully like a charnel house. The great altar is veiled in black, and is lit with six silver candlesticks, whose flames shine like yellow stars with clear twinkle and a soft halo round each black, fire-tipped wick. On each side of the altar, that seems to bar out God and his mercy from us and to wrap the very sun in a grave cloak, are two thrones, one for the grand-inquisitor and his counsel, another for the king and his court. The one is filled with sexton-like lawyers, the other with jewelled and feathered men.
"In front of the great altar and near the door where the blessed daylight shines with hope and joy, but not for us, is another altar, on which six gilded and illuminated missals lie open; those books of the Gospels, too, in which I had once read such texts as—God is love; Forgive as ye would be forgiven; Faith, hope, charity: these three, but the greatest of these is charity. Near this lesser altar the monks had raised a balustraded gallery, with bare benches, on which sat the criminals in their yellow and flame-striped tabards with their godfathers. The doomed ones came last, the more innocent first. Those who entered the black-hung church first, passing up nearest to the altar sat there, either praying or in a frightened trance of horrid expectancy. The trembling living corpses wearing the mitres, yellow and red, came last, preceded by a gigantic crucifix, the face turned from them.
"Immediately following these poor mitred men came servitors of the Inquisition, carrying four human effigies fastened to long staves, and four chests containing the bones of those men who had died before the fire could be got ready. The coffers were painted with flames and demons and the effigies wore the dreadful mitre and the crimson and yellow shirt all a-flame with paint. The effigies sometimes represented men tried for heresy since their death and whose estates had since been confiscated and their effigies doomed to be burnt as a warning; for no one within their reach may escape if they differ in opinion with the Inquisition.
"Every prisoner being now in his place—godfathers, torchmen, pikemen, musketeers, inquisitors, and flaunting court—the Provincial of the Augustins mounted the pulpit, followed by his ministrant and preached a stormy, denouncing, exulting sermon, half an hour long (it seemed a month of anguish), in which he compared the Church with burning eloquence to Noah's ark; but with this difference, that those animals who entered it before the deluge came out of it unaltered, but the blessed Inquisition had, by God's blessing, the power of changing those whom its walls once enclosed, turning them out meek as the lambs he saw around him so tranquil and devout, all of whom had once been cruel as wolves and savage and daring as lions.
"This sermon over, two readers mounted the pulpit to shout the list of names of the condemned, their crimes (now, for the first time, known to them) and their sentences. We grew all ears and trembled as each name was read.
"As each name was called the alcaide led out the prisoner from his pen to the middle of the gallery opposite the pulpit, where he remained standing, taper in hand. After the sentence he was led to the altar where he had to put his hand on one of the missals and to remain there on his knees.
"At the end of each sentence, the reader stopped to pronounce in a loud, angry voice, a full confession of faith, which he exhorted us, the guilty, to join with heart and voice. Then we all returned to our places. My offence, I found, was having spoken bitterly of the Inquisition, and having called a crucifix a mere bit of cut ivory. I was therefore declared excommunicated, my goods confiscated to the king, I was banished Spain and condemned to the Havana galleys for five years with the following penances: I must renounce all friendship with heretics and suspected persons; I must, for three years, confess and communicate three times a month; I must recite five times a day, for three years, the Pater and Ave Maria in honour of the Five Wounds; I must hear mass and sermon every Sunday and feast day; and above all, I must guard carefully the secret of all I had said, heard, or seen in the Holy Office (which oath, as the reader will observe, I have carefully kept).
"The inquisitor then quitted his seat, resumed his robes and followed by twenty priests, each with a staff in his hand, passed into the middle of the church and with divers prayers some of us were relieved from excommunication, each of us receiving a blow from a priest. Once, such an insult would have sent the blood in a rush to my head, and I had died but I had given a return buffet; now, so weak and broken-spirited was I, I burst into tears.