As we left the chamber, the countess, who had been conveyed out of the room, met us, and screaming out in the most pitiful manner upon seeing her husband with his hands tied behind his back like a thief or robber, flew to embrace him, and hanging on his neck, begged, with a flood of tears, we would be so merciful as to put an end to her life, that she might have the satisfaction—­the only satisfaction she wished for in this world, of dying in the bosom of the man from whom she had vowed never to part.  The count, overwhelmed with grief, did not utter a single word.  I could not find it in my heart, nor was I in a condition to interpose; and indeed a scene of greater distress was never beheld by human eyes.  However, I gave a signal to the notary to part them, which he did accordingly, quite unconcerned; but the countess fell into a swoon, and the count was meantime carried down stairs, and out of the house, amid the loud lamentations and sighs of his servants, on all sides, for he was a man remarkable for the sweetness of his temper, and his kindness to all around him.

Being arrived at the Inquisition, I consigned my prisoner into the hands of a gaoler, a lay brother of St. Dominic, who shut him up in the dungeon above-mentioned, and delivered the key to me.  I lay that night at the palace of the Inquisition, where every counsellor has a room, and returned next morning the key to the inquisitor, telling him that his order had been punctually complied with.  The inquisitor had been already informed of my conduct by the notary, and therefore, upon my delivering the key to him, he said, “You have acted like one who is at least desirous to overcome, with the assistance of grace, the inclinations of nature;” that is, like one who is desirous, by the assistance of grace, to metamorphose himself from a human creature into a brute or a devil.

In the Inquisition, every prisoner is kept the first week of his imprisonment in a dark narrow dungeon, so low that he cannot stand upright in it, without seeing anybody but the gaoler, who brings him, every other day, his portion of bread and water, the only food allowed him.  This is done, they say, to tame him, and render him, thus weakened, more sensible of the torture, and less able to endure it.  At the end of the week, he is brought in the night before the board to be examined; and on that occasion my poor friend appeared so altered, in a week’s time, that, had it not been for his dress, I should not have known him.  And indeed no wonder; a change of condition so sudden and unexpected; the unworthy and barbarous treatment he had already met with; the apprehension of what he might and probably should suffer; and perhaps, more than anything else, the distressed and forlorn condition of his once happy wife, whom he tenderly loved, whose company he had enjoyed only six months, could be attended with no other effect.