“Really, señor,” protested the Holy Father—“you—you—are not—are not giving—this matter—quite—quite fair—”
“Answer me, señor, without equivocation; did, or did not this man, of whom we are now speaking, die as the result of your hellish torments?” rapped out George, suddenly becoming exasperated and heavily smiting the table with his clenched fist.
“Reverend Father,” here interposed Fray Matthew, who could scarcely articulate because of his chattering teeth, “I pray you give me leave to retire. The violence of this heretic, this man of blood, frightens me.”
“No,” answered George, before the other could speak. “Being here, you will remain. It is possible that I may need you to supply me with information which your superior may be unwilling or unable to give. Now, señor”—turning to the Father Superior—“answer me.”
“Then—since you insist,” replied the Father Superior, “I can only reply that the man certainly did die as the result of being put to the question.”
“Very well,” returned George, taking up the list and making a note upon it. “Now, as to the next one?”
And again the long, tedious process of question and equivocation was gone through, over and over, until every name upon the list had been dealt with, when it finally appeared that, of the sixteen unhappy Englishmen who had become involved in the meshes of that terrible institution, the Holy Inquisition, no less than six had been burnt alive at the stake in the last auto-da-fé, seven had died miserably as the result of the torments to which they had been subjected, and a poor residue of three only still languished in their cells!
“And,” demanded George, when he had studied and fully digested the details of this terrible list—“who is responsible for this tremendous accumulation of ghastly human suffering and these hellish murders? You?”
“No, thank God! not I,” asserted the Father Superior, now trembling for his life, and with all his recent arrogance completely evaporated. “I am merely the Head of the strictly ecclesiastical section of the institution; I have nothing whatever to do with the proselytising, which is undertaken by, and is entirely in the hands of, the Grand Inquisitor and his assistants.”
“And where,” asked George, “are these people to be found?”