“But where popular fury reached its highest pitch was in the vaults of St. Pius V. I am anxious that you should note well that this pope was canonized by the Roman church especially for his zeal against heretics.  I will now describe to you the manner how, and the place where, those vicars of Jesus Christ handled the living members of Jesus Christ, and show you how they proceeded for their healing.  You descend into the vaults by very narrow stairs.  A narrow corridor leads you to the several cells, which, for smallness and stench, are a hundred times more horrible than the dens of lions and tigers in the Colosseum.  Wandering in this labyrinth of most fearful prisons, that may be called ‘graves for the living,’ I came to a cell full of skeletons without skulls, buried in lime, and the skulls, detached from the bodies, had been collected in a hamper by the first visitors.  Whose were those skeletons? and why were they buried in that place and in that manner?  I have heard some popish priests trying to defend the Inquisition from the charge of having condemned its victims to a secret death, say that the palace of the Inquisition was built on a burial-ground, belonging anciently to a hospital for pilgrims, and that the skeletons found were none other than those of pilgrims who had died in that hospital.  But everything contradicts this papistical defence.  Suppose that there had been a cemetery there, it could not have had subterranean galleries and cells, laid out with so great regularity; and even if there had been such—­against all probability —­the remains of bodies would have been removed on laying the foundation of the palace, to leave the space free for the subterranean part of the Inquisition.  Besides, it is contrary to the use of common tombs to bury the dead by carrying them through a door at the side; for the mouth of the sepulchre is always at the top.  And again, it has never been the custom in Italy to bury the dead singly in quick lime; but, in time of plague, the dead bodies have been usually laid in a grave until it was sufficiently full, and then quick lime has been laid over them, to prevent pestilential exhalations, by hastening the decomposition of the infected corpses.  This custom was continued, some years ago, in the cemeteries of Naples, and especially in the daily burial of the poor.  Therefore, the skeletons found in the Inquisition of Rome could not belong to persons who had died a natural death in a hospital; nor could any one, under such a supposition, explain the mystery of all the bodies being buried in lime except the head.  It remains, then, beyond a doubt, that that subterranean vault contained the victims of one of the many secret martyrdoms of the butcherly tribunal.  The following is the most probable opinion, if it be not rather the history of a fact: