were there. `They set those short sticks
under my arms,' the Queen said, speaking heavily as it were with sleep.
`Then they jerk up the pulleys, and I have to go up with them. It hurts
very much. I think I scream sometimes, and then he beats me for
disturbing people. They alway do it at night. They say I need it, and
I am mad. I marvel if they cure mad people so in England. And I think
if they did it sometimes in the day, it would not disturb people so
much. You see, I understand it not--at least they say so. But I fancy
I understood better before the _cuerda_.'

"I was silent from very horror, as the fearful truth dawned slowly upon
me. `_Ay de mi_!' sighed the Queen again, leaving her head fall back
upon her arms. `My father never used to do so. They say 'tis by his
command. I marvel if they tell me the truth.'--`Who dareth to do thus
unto your Highness?' I said at last. `Denia,' she said, in the same
dreamy fashion, `and them he bringeth with him. They want me to
confess, and to hear mass. I think they make me go sometimes, when that
thing in mine head is lost. But if I know it, I resist them.'

"Again she lifted her head, and her voice grew more resolute.
`_Muchacha_, I have been here twenty-six years. All that time, in this
chamber! They left me two of my children at the first. Then they took
the Infant Don Fernando from me. And all my heart twined round my
little maid,--my last-born, my Catalina! So they took her. I never
knew why. I never did know wherefore they began at all, save for
listening to some French friars that came to see me. And they told me
very good things. God was good, they said, and loved me, and Jesus our
Lord had taken away all my sins. And it was good to think so. So then
_they_ beat me, and set me in the _cuerda_; and they called me an
heretic, and a Lutheran, and all the bad words they knew. I do not
think the holy angels at the gates of Paradise will turn me away, nor
call me an heretic, because I thought Jesus had taken away my sins. If
this be Lutheranism, then I am a Lutheran--then I will be a Lutheran for
ever! And those were good friars, that came from Paris. They say the
Observants are the ones I should believe. The Queen Dona Isabel set
Observants about me. But the Observants beat me, and put me in the
_cuerda_; and the Good Men [Note 2]--the French friars--said Jesus our
Lord loved me, and had taken away all my sins. That was the better
Evangel