“The mode of your proceeding,” cried I, “is the mockery of a trial. From your fatal bar no man can go forth acquitted. How is a story to be refuted, when hardly and with difficulty you suffer your prisoner to collect the slightest fragments of it? If I would detect a calumny, is it not requisite that I should be acquainted with its history, and know its authors and propagators? Then I may perhaps be able to confound their forgeries, to show the groundlessness of their allegations, to expose the baseness of their purposes and the profligacy of their characters. I am informed of nothing; yet I am bid, first to be my own accuser, and then to answer the accusations of others. It is only by following a falsehood through all its doublings that it can be effectually destroyed. You bid me unravel a web, and will not suffer me to touch it with one of my fingers. The defence of the purest innocence is often difficult, sometimes impossible, against the artfulness of a malicious tale, or the fortuitous concurrence of unfavourable appearances. But you strip innocence of those consecrated weapons by which only it can be defended. Give to an accusation the particulars with which what really happens must always be attended, give to it the circumstances of place and of time, lay aside the ambiguity and generalities in which you shelter yourselves, and then, perhaps then only, it can be victoriously repelled. You ask me a thousand various and artfully constructed questions. What sort of a man do you imagine me to be? I am not a fool, that I should be inveigled; I am not a boy, that I should be menaced into confessions. Cease your base and unprincipled arts! I will furnish no materials against myself. If you know anything against me, avow it! Propose it, and I will answer. Think not to patch up a miserable accusation out of the words which inadvertence or weariness may cause me to utter. Shame on your institution! May infamy overtake the system of your proceedings! That religion which is supported by such means is viler than atheism. That civilisation which has its basis in despotism, is more worthless and hateful than the state of savages running wild in their woods.
“Do you not perceive that the language I am now holding to you is the exclusive privilege of conscious innocence? The indignation I express is no artificial rage, studiously contrived to overbear accusation. You have it, as it flows spontaneously to my tongue, warm from the promptings of an honest heart. If I could have consulted a friend, it is probable he would have dissuaded me from my present demeanour as impolitic. If I were governed by the dictates of an ordinary prudence, I should have displayed less ardour, less resentment. But I am willing to try whether shame cannot yet be lighted up even in the cheek of an inquisitor.”
The father who examined me, having in vain endeavoured to check the current of my invective, changed his manner, and assumed a tone diametrically the reverse of mine. He professed that he felt much compassion and interest for my misfortune, and should deem himself happy if he could be the instrument of my deliverance. The language I had uttered was highly indecorous, and such as seemed in itself to call for a rigorous penance. But he should not think himself worthy the name of a man, if he did not make suitable allowance for the bitter and extravagant sentiments, that would occasionally find their way into the mind of one in my unfortunate situation. So circumstanced, men would often mistake their friends for their enemies. I regarded the inquisition as my enemy: it was in reality my firm and disinterested friend; zealously watchful for my body, my soul, and my estate. Other courts had other maxims of proceeding, because their motives of action were different; and it was but just that they should furnish their prisoners with a defence against their frailty. But the breast of an inquisitor was accessible to no sentiment but that of love; a burning love of God; love of the church; love of the prisoner, who might be wrongfully accused; love of the penitent, whom he reconciled to our common mother, the church; love even of the incorrigible heretic whose body he burned for the good of his soul. The inquisitor did not discover to the prisoner the evidence adduced against him; that was between God and the inquisitor’s conscience. But the suppression which was thus practised rendered him doubly scrupulous and sceptical as to the evidence he received; he sifted it with a severity that the prisoner would in vain endeavour to imitate; and the rules of evidence in that court were so guarded, punctilious, and minute, as to render any mistake in its proceedings altogether impossible. For a man to be once a prisoner of the court of inquisition, by a salutary prejudice which prevailed through the catholic world, rendered him for ever infamous. This was another cause of the extreme wariness and caution, with which that court was accustomed to proceed. They first listened to the accuser, who was obliged to give in his information on oath. They then instituted a secret enquiry against the party accused; and, till they had collected abundant ground for their proceeding, they did not venture to touch a hair of his head. They elaborately classed all the different degrees of evidence into half proof, full proof, proof less than half, and proof less than full. When these things were duly considered, it would appear certain that no court that had at any time existed on earth, had ever been so tender in its proceedings, so pure in its incitements, and so every way superior to the attacks of calumny and malice, as the court of inquisition.
With respect to myself in particular, he said, they had not apprehended me and put me upon my defence, without previously assembling a large body of miscellaneous and circumstantial evidence. The evidence they had drawn from myself was negative only, but it was strong: the obscurity that hung about my person, who I was, and whence I came; and the obscurity that hung about my fortune, a great visible expenditure in Spain or in Italy, and no visible means. These were not the signatures and tokens of innocence. They tended strongly to confirm the accusation under which I laboured. Yet so tender was the inquisition in its proceeding, and so chary of its reputation, that upon these accumulated proofs and presumptions, they were not prepared to pronounce against me. They would hear me again and again. They would give me time to recollect myself, and for this purpose they would order for me a coarse and scanty fare, and a solitary cell. I might depend upon it my contumacy should be overcome. The fundamental principle of their proceedings was borrowed from that humane and compassionate maxim of the old Roman law, De vita hominis nulla cunctatio est longa; and I should accordingly find them free from all precipitation and impatience, and ready to indulge me with a residence, however long, in their prisons, till my case had been sifted to the bottom.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The indulgence thus ostentatiously proclaimed by the father-inquisitor was not exactly to my taste. Finding that all the energy of mind I could apply to my defence was vain, I determined to have recourse to a different mode of proceeding. I received three admonitions, as they call them, the substance of which I have already recited, in the course of the first ten days of my confinement, and I then for some time heard of the inquisitor no more. I understood that it was frequently the practice, after three admonitions, not to bring up the prisoner for further hearing during a whole year; and it appeared sufficiently probable from the last words addressed to me by my judge, that this policy was intended to be employed in my case. Without further delay therefore I resolved to recur to the expedient in the use of which my power was unbounded, and by a brilliant offer at once to subdue the scruples, and secure the fidelity, of the person or persons upon whom my safe custody might be found to depend. All that was necessary was to convince the party to whom I should propose the assisting me, of the reality of my powers; and then to put carte blanche into his hands, or rather to ascertain at once the extent of his hopes and demands, and by a spirited and peremptory conduct to yield them all. In the period which, immediately previous to my present imprisonment, I had devoted to the meditation of my future plans and the review of my past, I had severely accused myself of half measures, and had determined to abjure all hesitation and irresoluteness for the time to come. It is not indeed to be wondered at, that, possessing a power so utterly remote from common ideas and conceptions, and which, speaking from experience, I do not hesitate to affirm no mere effort of imagination is adequate to represent, I should have acted below the prerogatives and demands of my situation. This mistake I would make no more. I would overwhelm opposition by the splendour of my proceedings, and confound scruples by the dignity and princely magnificence of my appearance. Unshackled as I was with connections, and risking no one’s happiness but my own, I proposed to compel the human species to view me from an awful distance, and to oblige every one that approached me to feel his inferiority. It would be to the last degree disgraceful and contemptible in me, being raised so far above my peers in my privileges, if I were to fall below the ordinary standard of a gallant man in the decision and firmness of my system of conduct. Decision and firmness were the principles to be exercised by me now; dignity and magnificence must await their turn hereafter.
It was not long before I embraced an opportunity of speaking to the man who waited on me with my daily allotment of provisions, and I designed as shortly as possible to proceed to that species of argument, in which I principally confided to engage him in my cause. But he did not suffer me to utter a sentence before with a very expressive gesture he interrupted me. I had remarked already the silence which seemed for ever to pervade this dismal abode; but I had not ascribed importance enough to this circumstance, to suppose that it could materially interfere with the project I had formed. I now perceived the countenance of my attendant to be overspread with terror and alarm. He put his hand upon my mouth, and by his attitude seemed earnestly to insist upon my conforming to the rules of the prison. I was not however to be thus diverted from my purpose. I seized his hands, and began again to pursue the discourse I had meditated. This proceeding on my part induced him to break the silence he had hitherto preserved. He told me that if I did not instantly set him at liberty, he would alarm the prison. I loosed his hands. I then by every gesture I could devise endeavoured to prevail on him to approach me, to suffer me to confer with him in the lowest whisper, and assured him that he should have no reason to repent his compliance. I might as well have addressed myself to the walls that inclosed me. He would not stay an instant; he would yield in nothing. He burst from me abruptly, and, closing the door of my cell, left me in solitude and darkness.