Did no one step forward to assist her? to raise her up, and offer her restoratives?  No—­not one.  Hundreds would have done so, but they dared not:  she was an outcast, excommunicated, abandoned, and lost; and should any one, moved by compassion for a suffering fellow-creature, have ventured to raise her up, he would have been looked upon with suspicion, and most probably have been arraigned, and have had to settle the affair of conscience with the Holy Inquisition.

After a short time two of the officers of the Inquisition went to Amine and raised her again in her seat, and she recovered sufficiently to enable her to retain her posture.

A sermon was then preached by a Dominican monk, in which he pourtrayed the tender mercies, the paternal love of the Holy Office.  He compared the Inquisition to the ark of Noah, out of which all the animals walked after the deluge; but with this difference, highly in favour of the Holy Office, that the animals went forth from the ark no better than they went in, whereas those who had gone into the Inquisition with all the cruelty of disposition, and with the hearts of wolves, came out as mild and patient as lambs.

The public accuser then mounted the pulpit, and read from it all the crimes of those who had been condemned, and the punishments which they were to undergo.  Each prisoner, as the sentence was read, was brought forward to the pulpit by the officers, to hear their sentence, standing up, with their wax candles lighted in their hands.  As soon as the sentences of all those whose lives had been spared were read, the Grand Inquisitor put on his priestly robes and, followed by several others, took off from them the ban of excommunication (which they were supposed to have fallen under), by throwing holy water on them with a small broom.

As soon as this portion of the ceremony was over, those who were condemned to suffer, and the effigies of those who had escaped by death, were brought up one by one, and their sentences read; the winding up of the condemnation of all was in the same words, “that the Holy Inquisition found it impossible on account of the hardness of their hearts and the magnitude of their crimes, to pardon them.  With great concern it handed them over to Secular Justice to undergo the penalty of the laws; exhorting the authorities at the same time to show clemency and mercy towards the unhappy wretches, and if they must suffer death, that at all events it might be without the spilling of blood.”  What mockery was this apparent intercession, not to shed blood, when to comply with their request, they substituted the torment and the agony of the stake!

Amine was the last who was led forward to the pulpit, which was fixed against one of the massive columns of the centre aisle, close to the throne occupied by the Grand Inquisitor.  “You, Amine Vanderdecken,” cried the public accuser.  At this moment an unusual bustle was heard in the crowd under the pulpit, there was struggling and expostulation, and the officers raised their wands for silence and decorum—­but it continued.