eat as under the Inquisition. A person apprehended on
any charge was imprisoned in a frightful dungeon, damp, infested by rats
and vermin, generally in chains, and he was often forced to lie in a
constrained position. This was a part of the policy which prevailed in
the administration of justice. It was intended to break the spirit and
courage of the accused. Confinement was solitary, and various
circumstances besides pain and hunger were brought to bear on the
imagination. It was the rule that every accused person must fast for
eight or ten hours before torture. The dungeons were often ingenious
means of torture. There was one in the Bastille at Paris, the floor of
which was conical, with the point downwards so that it was impossible to
sit, or lie, or stand in it. In another, in the Chatelet, the floor was
all the time covered by water, in which the prisoners must stand.[580]

+258. The yellow crosses.+ One of the penalties inflicted by the
Inquisition causes astonishment and at the same time shows how
thoroughly the mass of the population were on the side of the
Inquisition until the fifteenth century. Persons convicted of heresy,
but coerced to penitence, were forced to wear crosses of cloth,
generally yellow, three spans long and two wide, sewed on their
garments. Thus the symbol of Christian devotion was turned into a badge
of shame.[581] It pointed out the wearer as an outcast. However, it
depended on the mass of the population to say what it should mean. How
did they treat persons thus marked? They boycotted them. The wearers of
crosses could not find employment, or human intercourse, or husbands, or
wives. They were actually unable to get the relations with other men and
women which are essential to existence.[582] If the people had pitied
them, or sympathized with them, they would have shown it by kindness, in
spite of ecclesiastical orders. In fact, the cross was a badge of infamy
and was enforced as such by public action. "The unfortunate penitent was
exposed to the ridicule and derision of all whom he met, and was heavily
handicapped in every effort to earn a livelihood."[583] It is evident
that the way in which the general public treated the cross-wearers can
alone account for the weight which those under this penalty attached to
it. "It was always considered very shameful." At Augsburg, in 1393, for
seventy gold gulden, the wearing of crosses could be escaped.[584]

+259. Confiscation.+ Another penalty of