“Leonor! Leonor! I come to you,” he cried out; but as he uttered the words, a blow from a heavy staff on the forehead laid him senseless on the ground. When he returned to consciousness, it was to find himself in a narrow, dark, and noisome cell, which he well knew must be one of the secret prisons of that fearful institution, the Inquisition. He had often heard of the horrors those gloomy walls could reveal. He knew that thousands of his fellow-creatures had been confined within them; that very many had never again seen the light of day; that others had been brought forth as spectacles to be mocked at, dressed in fantastic costumes, and thus had been committed to the flames.
On the hard flag-stones he knelt down, and then, in close communion with his God, he obtained a strength and courage which no human power could have given him. Hour after hour, and day after day, passed away, and he remained alone in darkness, a cowled figure entering occasionally, and as quickly retiring, without uttering a word or making a sign. When not engaged in prayer, his thoughts were with Leonor; and even when thus engaged, they often turned to her, and she became their chief and absorbing subject, that she might have strength, that she might have courage to hold to the truth.
At length the moment arrived when his powers of endurance were to be put to the test—his faith, his courage. The door opened, and six familiars, with their countenances masked, and their figures concealed by dark robes, entered his cell. His eyes, long accustomed to darkness, could scarcely endure the light from a torch which one of them carried, but he saw that they made signs to him to rise and accompany them. He knew that to disobey would be useless. Rising from the ground on which he had been resting, he endeavoured by earnest prayer to nerve himself for the fearful ordeal through which he might have to go.
Chapter Seven.
The Torture.
Antonio Herezuelo was only one of many who on that unhappy night were seized by the officers of the Inquisition and dragged off to prison. In consequence of the information given by the wife of Juan Garcia, eighty persons were immediately apprehended in Valladolid, among those who had been present at the meetings; and in Seville and its neighbourhood two hundred were betrayed into the hands of the inquisitors by the treachery of a pretended member of the Protestant Church, and the superstitious fears of another. The first, suspecting that some of his acquaintances entertained Lutheran opinions, insinuated himself into their confidence for the express purpose of learning their secrets and of betraying them. The latter, hearing Lutheran principles denounced in the most fearful language, as the only means of saving himself from the results of the anathemas, hurried off and informed against all those he knew to be Protestants. Dismay seized upon large numbers of the most timid of the Protestants; and as people are often panic-struck when a ship strikes the rocks, and leap overboard into the raging surf, so some of them hurried off to the Triana, and accused themselves to the inquisitors of entertaining doctrines for which the stake was the sure punishment. Others, who had been before unsuspected, betrayed themselves by the hurried manner of their flight. Thus in a few days the chief members of all the Protestant Churches throughout Spain were either in prison, or fugitives, or hiding in the caves of the earth, among mountains and forests. In no place, however, were they safe, and many even of those abroad were betrayed into the hands of the emissaries of the Inquisition, and dragged back to Spain to suffer death at the stake. The inquisitors were not content with those who denounced themselves. Every possible means was employed to discover heretics, and to assist the object Philip renewed a royal ordinance—fallen into desuetude—allowing to informers the fourth part of the property of those guilty of heresy. This abominable edict greatly increased the zeal and activity of the vile tribe. Pope Paul the Fourth also assisted with eagerness in the object, and issued a bull enjoining all confessors to examine their penitents, from the highest to the lowest, and to charge them to denounce all whom they knew to be guilty of buying, selling, reading, or possessing any book prohibited by the Holy Office, the punishment being death. The great aim of the papists was to strike terror into the minds of the whole nation; and while they had not the most distant intention of extending mercy to those who professed themselves penitent, they were nevertheless anxious to secure a triumph to the Catholic faith (as they called their system of idolatry and tyranny), by having in it their power to read, in the public auto-da-fé, the forced retractions of those who had embraced the truth.
Antonio Herezuelo stood before the council of inquisitors. So well-known is the scene that it scarcely requires description. It is too true a picture—an exhibition of devilish ingenuity of man when he desires to tyrannise over his fellow-creatures, unsurpassed in cruelty by the heathen or most barbarous nations of ancient or modern days. There sat the inquisitors in a gloomy vaulted chamber—on one side the fearful rack, with grim, savage executioners ready to perform their office, a black curtain only partly concealing other instruments of torture, with hooded familiars standing silently round; while at the table sat two secretaries, ready to note every word uttered by the prisoner, to be wrested, if possible, to his destruction. The only person whose countenance could have been regarded with satisfaction was the prisoner. He stood calm and undaunted amidst those cruel men, who had resolved on his death. Hark! the president addresses him in a harsh, pitiless voice:
“Antonio Herezuelo, you have been accused by most credible witnesses of holding in disrespect many of the principal articles of our most holy faith. What have you to answer for yourself?”