“After having been in the prison of the inquisition for full three years, examined a few times, but constantly refusing to confess the things laid to his charge, he was at length brought out of the cell, and led through tortuous passages to the place of torment.  It was near evening.  He found himself in a subterranean chamber, rather spacious, arched over, and hung with black cloth.  The whole conclave was lighted by candles in sconces on the walls.  At one end there was a separate chamber, wherein were an inquisitor and his notary seated at a table.  The place, gloomy, intent, and everywhere terrible, seemed to be the very home of death.  Hither he was brought, and the inquisitor again exhorted him to tell the truth before the torture should begin.  On his answering that he had already told the truth, the inquisitor gravely protested that he was bringing himself to the torture by his own obstinacy; and that if he should suffer loss of blood, or even expire, during the question, the holy office would be blameless.  Having thus spoken, the inquisitor left him in the hands of the tormentors, who stripped him, and compressed his body so tightly in a pair of linen drawers, that he could no longer draw breath, and must have died, had they not suddenly relaxed the pressure; but with recovered breathing came pain unutterably exquisite.  The anguish being past, they repeated a monition to confess the truth, before the torture, as they said, should begin; and the same was afterwards repeated at each interval.

“As Orobio persisted in denial, they bound his thumbs so tightly with small cords that the blood burst from under the nails, and they were swelled excessively.  Then they made him stand against the wall on a small stool, passed cords around various parts of his body, but principally around the arms and legs, and carried them over iron pulleys in the ceiling.  The tormentor then pulled the cords with all his strength, applying his feet to the wall, and giving the weight of his body to increase the purchase.  With these ligatures his arms and legs, fingers and toes, were so wrung and swollen that he felt as if fire were devouring them.  In the midst of this torment the man kicked down the stool which had supported his feet, so that he hung upon the cords with his whole weight, which suddenly increased their tension, and gave indescribable aggravation to his pain.  Next followed a new kind of torment.  An instrument resembling a small ladder, consisting of two parallel pieces of wood, and five transverse pieces, with the anterior edges sharpened, was placed before him, so that when the tormentor struck it heavily, he received the stroke five times multiplied on each shin bone, producing pain that was absolutely intolerable, and under which he fainted.  Bat no sooner was be revived than they inflicted a new torture.  The tormentor tied other cords around his wrists, and having his own shoulders covered with leather, that they might not be chafed, passed round them the rope which was to draw the cords, set his feet against the wall, threw himself back with all his force, and the cords cut through to the bones.  This he did thrice, each time changing the position of the cords, leaving a small distance between the successive wounds; but it happened that in pulling the second time they slipped into the first wounds, and caused such a gush of blood that Orobio seemed to be bleeding to death.