of a chisel; while in the only comfortable chair
lounged a certain smiling Jesuit father, who, though under the open
censure of his General, was yet the most powerful man in all their
terrible Order--one Mariana, historian, pamphleteer, disputant, plotter,
inquisitor, and chief firebrand of the new Society which had come to
turn the world upside down.

These three men awaited a messenger who was to bring them momentous
intelligence from a city far away.

Little was said, though it was supper-time, and wines and meat had been
placed on the table. The two Fathers of the Holy Office ate sparingly,
as became men whose eyes had seen their fellows endure many hours of
torment that day, in order that their hearts and minds might be purified
from heresy, and their money chink in the coffers of Holy Church. Only
Mariana ate and drank heartily. For was it not his business to go about
the world with soft compressive palm and a cheerful smile on his rosy
face, a complete refutation of the idea that a Jesuit must of necessity
be a dark and cunning plotter, or an inquisitor, merely an
ecclesiastical executioner?

The Chief Surintendant Teruel was a grim Aragonese, a peasant brought up
hardly, the humanity ground out of him by long years of noviciate, till
now he knew no pity, no kindness, no faltering, while he carried out the
will of God as interpreted to him by his hierarchical superiors.

Little Frey Tullio, on the contrary, was a Neapolitan, who had been sent
over from Rome on purpose to familiarise himself with the best Spanish
methods. For nowhere did the Holy Office thrive so congenially and root
itself so deeply as in Catholic Spain. Frey Tullio did his work
conscientiously, but without the stern joy of his Aragonese superior,
and certainly wholly without the supple, subtle wit and smiling finesse
of Mariana, the famous "outcast" of the Company of the Gesu.

"A man is waiting below," said a black-robed acolyte, who had handled
certain confession-producing ropes and cords that day, and was now also
resting from his labours. The prisoners who had been saved for the next
_auto de fe_ (except those who, being delicate, had succumbed to the
Lesser and Greater Question) rested equally from theirs--in the cellars
below, the blood stiffening in their unwashed wounds, and their
rack-tormented bones setting into place a little so as to be ready for
ten of the clock on the morrow.

"A man waiting below?" repeated the Chief Inquis