Would that
it were! Its parallel will be found, again and again repeated, in the
annals--not of the Inquisition alone--but of every European state
where the Romanists held sway.
But Marie's prayer for superhuman strength had been heard. No cry,
scarcely a groan, escaped her. She saw Don Luis at her side; she
heard his hissing whisper that there was yet time to retract and
be released; but she deigned him no reply whatever. It was not his
purpose to try her endurance to the utmost in the first, second, or
third trial; though, so enraged at her calmness, as scarcely to be
able to restrain it even before his colleagues, and with difficulty
controlling his fiendish desire to increase the torture to its utmost
at once, he remanded her to her dungeon till his further pleasure
should be known. She had fainted under the intolerable pain, and lay
for many successive hours, too exhausted even to raise to her parched
lips the pitcher of water lying near her. And even the gradual
cessation of suffering, the sensation of returning power, brought with
them the agonized thought, that they did but herald increased and
increasing torture.
One night--she knew not how long after she had been remanded to her
cell, but, counting by suffering, it felt many weary nights and
days--she sunk into a sleep or trance, which transported her to her
early home in the Vale of Cedars.
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