ty to the
Moors and the rich Jews forms one of the blackest chapters in history.
Inquisitors became fiends. Moors were starved, tortured, burned, flung
in wells, Jewish bankers had their tongues thrust through little iron
rings; then the end of the tongue was seared that it might swell, and
the banker was led by a string in the ring through the streets of the
city. The women and the children were put on rafts that were pushed out
into the Mediterranean Sea. When the swollen corpses drifted ashore, the
plague broke out, and when that black plague spread over Spain it seemed
like the justice of outraged nature. The expulsion of the Moors was one
of the deadliest blows ever struck at science, commerce, art and
literature. The historian tracks Spain across the continents by a trail
of blood. Wherever Spain's hand has fallen it has paralyzed. From the
days of Cortez, wherever her captains have given a pledge, the tongue
that spake has been mildewed with lies and treachery. The wildest beasts
are not in the jungle; man is the lion that rends, man is the leopard
that tears, man's hate is the serpent that poisons, and the Spaniard
entered Belgium to turn a garden into a wilderness. Within one year,
1568, Antwerp, that began with 125,000 people, ended it with 50,000.
Many multitudes were put to death by the sword and stake, but many, many
thousands fled to England, to begin anew their lives as manufacturers
and mariners; and for years Belgium was one quaking peril, an inferno,
whose torturers were Spaniards. The visitor in Antwerp is still shown
the rack upon which they stretched the merchants that they might yield
up their hidden gold. The Painted Lady may be seen. Opening her arms,
she embraces the victim. The Spaniard, with his spear, forced the
merchant into the deadly embrace. As the iron arms concealed in velvet
folded together, one spike passed through each eye, another through the
mouth, another through the heart. The Painted Lady's lips were poisoned,
so that a kiss was fatal. The dungeon whose sides were forced together
by screws, so that each day the victim saw his cell growing less and
less, and knew that soon he would be crushed to death, was another
instrument of torture. Literally thousands of innocent men and women
were burned alive in the market place.

There is no more piteous tragedy in history than the story of the
decline and ruin of this superbly prosperous, literary and artistic
country, and yet out of the