Page:The Forest Sanctuary.pdf/99
The torture, repeatedly applied, could not draw from them the least evidence against their religions associates. Every artifice was employed to obtain a recantation from the two sisters, since the constancy and learning of Gonzalez precluded all hopes of a theological victory. Their answer, if not exactly logical, is wonderfully simple and affecting. 'We will die in the faith of our brother: he is too wise to be wrong, and too good to deceive us.'—The three stakes on which they died were near each other. The priest had been gagged till the moment of lighting up the wood. The few minutes that he was allowed to speak he employed in comforting his sisters, with whom he sung the 109th Psalm, till the flames smothered their voices."—Ibid.
Note 6, page 19, lines 8 and 9.
And deem the name
A hundred chiefs had borne, cast down by you to shame.
The names, not only of the immediate victims of the Inquisition, were devoted to infamy, but those of all their relations were branded with the same indelible stain, which was likewise to descend as an inheritance to their latest posterity.
Note 7, page 28, lines 10 and 11.
'Twas not within the city—but in sight
Of the snow-crown'd sierras.
The piles erected for these executions were without the towns, and the final scene of an Auto da Fe was sometimes, from the length of the preceding ceremonies, delayed till midnight.