to and fro, staring
down at his bare feet, his arms hugging his sides tightly. He would
dream of Father Beron sitting at the end of a long black table, behind
which, in a row, appeared the heads, shoulders, and epaulettes of the
military members, nibbling the feather of a quill pen, and listening
with weary and impatient scorn to the protestations of some prisoner
calling heaven to witness of his innocence, till he burst out, "What's
the use of wasting time over that miserable nonsense! Let me take
him outside for a while." And Father Beron would go outside after
the clanking prisoner, led away between two soldiers. Such interludes
happened on many days, many times, with many prisoners. When the
prisoner returned he was ready to make a full confession, Father Beron
would declare, leaning forward with that dull, surfeited look which can
be seen in the eyes of gluttonous persons after a heavy meal.

The priest's inquisitorial instincts suffered but little from the want
of classical apparatus of the Inquisition At no time of the world's
history have men been at a loss how to inflict mental and bodily anguish
upon their fellow-creatures. This aptitude came to them in the
growing complexity of their passions and the early refinement of their
ingenuity. But it may safely be said that primeval man did not go to
the trouble of inventing tortures. He was indolent and pure of heart.
He brained his neighbour ferociously with a stone axe from necessity and
without malice. The stupidest mind may invent a rankling phrase or brand
the innocent with a cruel aspersion. A piece of string and a ramrod; a
few muskets in combination with a length of hide rope; or even a simple
mallet of heavy, hard wood applied with a swing to human fingers or
to the joints of a human body is enough for the infliction of the most
exquisite torture. The doctor had been a very stubborn prisoner, and, as
a natural consequence of that "bad disposition" (so Father Beron called
it), his subjugation had been very crushing and very complete. That is
why the limp in his walk, the twist of his shoulders, the scars on his
cheeks were so pronounced. His confessions, when they came at last, were
very complete, too. Sometimes on the nights when he walked the floor,
he wondered, grinding his teeth with shame and rage, at the fertility
of his imagination when stimulated by a sort of pain which makes truth,
honour, selfrespect, and life itself matters of little moment.

A