ght but of Philip; of his being
safe from these merciless creatures--of the happiness of dying first,
and of meeting him again in bliss.

Worn with long confinement, with suspense and anxiety, fatigued and
suffering from her painful walk, and the exposure to the burning sun,
after so many months' incarceration in a dungeon, she no longer shone
radiant with beauty; but still there was something even more touching in
her care-worn yet still perfect features. The object of universal gaze,
she walked with her eyes cast down, and nearly closed; but occasionally,
when she did look up, the fire that flashed from them spoke the proud
soul within, and many feared and wondered, while more pitied that one so
young, and still so lovely, should be doomed to such an awful fate.
Amine had not taken her seat in the cathedral more than a few seconds,
when, overpowered by her feelings and by fatigue she fell back in a
swoon.

Did no one step forward to assist her? to raise her up, and offer her
restoratives? No--not one. Hundreds would have done so, but they dared
not: she was an outcast, excommunicated, abandoned, and lost; and should
any one, moved by compassion for a suffering fellow-creature, have
ventured to raise her up he would have been looked upon with suspicion,
and most probably have been arraigned, and have had to settle the affair
of conscience with the Holy Inquisition.

After a short time two of the officers of the Inquisition went to Amine
and raised her again in her seat, and she recovered sufficiently to
enable her to retain her posture.

A sermon was then preached by a Dominican monk, in which he portrayed
the tender mercies, the paternal love of the Holy Office. He compared
the Inquisition to the ark of Noah, out of which all the animals walked
after the deluge, but with this difference highly in favour of the Holy
Office, that the animals went forth from the ark no better than they
went in, whereas those who had gone into the Inquisition with all the
cruelty of disposition, and with the hearts of wolves, came out as mild
and patient as lambs.

The public accuser then mounted the pulpit, and read from it all the
crimes of those who had been condemned, and the punishments which they
were to undergo. Each prisoner, as his sentence was read, was brought
forward to the pulpit by the officers to hear it, standing up, with his
wax candle lighted in his hand. As soon as the sentences of all those
whose lives had