[Footnote 11:  Gonsalvius, p. 135.]

As the sacred banner of the inquisition advanced, the countless throng sunk on their knees before it; they bowed their faces to the very earth as it passed, and then slowly rose again, like a great undulating billow.  A murmur of tongues prevailed as the prisoners approached, and eager eyes were strained, and fingers pointed, to distinguish the different orders of penitents, whose habits denoted the degree of punishment they were to undergo.  But as those drew near whose frightful garb marked them as destined to the flames, the noise of the rabble subsided; they seemed almost to hold in their breath; filled with that strange and dismal interest with which we contemplate a human being on the verge of suffering and death.

It is an awful thing—­a voiceless, noiseless multitude!  The hushed and gazing stillness of the surrounding thousands, heaped on walls, and gates, and roofs, and hanging, as it were, in clusters, heightened the effect of the pageant that moved drearily on.  The low murmuring of the priests could now be heard in prayer and exhortation, with the faint responses of the prisoners, and now and then the voices of the choir at a distance, chanting the litanies of the saints.

The faces of the prisoners were ghastly and disconsolate.  Even those who had been pardoned, and wore the Sanbenito, or penitential garment, bore traces of the horrors they had undergone.  Some were feeble and tottering, from long confinement; some crippled and distorted by various tortures; every countenance was a dismal page, on which might be read the secrets of their prison-house.  But in the looks of those condemned to death, there was something fierce and eager.  They seemed men harrowed up by the past, and desperate as to the future.  They were anticipating, with spirits fevered by despair, and fixed and clenched determination, the vehement struggle with agony and death which they were shortly to undergo.  Some cast now and then a wild and anguished look about them, upon the shining day; the “sun-bright palaces,” the gay, the beautiful world, which they were soon to quit for ever; or a glance of sudden indignation at the thronging thousands, happy in liberty and life, who seemed, in contemplating their frightful situation, to exult in their own comparative security.

One among the condemned, however, was an exception to these remarks.  It was an aged man, somewhat bowed down, with a serene, though dejected countenance, and a beaming, melancholy eye.  It was the alchymist.  The populace looked upon him with a degree of compassion, which they were not prone to feel towards criminals condemned by the inquisition; but when they were told that he was convicted of the crime of magic, they drew back with awe and abhorrence.

The procession had reached the grand square.  The first part had already mounted the scaffolding, and the condemned were approaching.  The press of the populace became excessive, and was repelled, as it were, in billows by the guards.  Just as the condemned were entering the square, a shrieking was heard among the crowd.  A female, pale, frantic, dishevelled, was seen struggling through the multitude.  “My father! my father!” was all the cry she uttered, but it thrilled through every heart.  The crowd instinctively drew back, and made way for her as she advanced.