Torquemada listened, with
a curling lip and contracted brow. He was not surprised, he said,
for it was exactly what he had expected. It was a part of their
blaspheming creed, to blind by sorcery, the eyes and minds of all
those who had ever attempted to win them over by kind and reasonable
argument. Father Denis had been bewitched, as all were, who ever
attempted to convert, by other than the harshest means. Her grace must
see the necessity of severity, and surely could not refuse the using
it any longer. But Isabella did refuse, till her last resource had
been tried; and all she asked was, if she might hold forth a powerful
temporal temptation to obtain the end she so earnestly desired?
Torquemada hesitated; but at length, on being told the severe
alternative which Isabella would enforce, if her first proposal were
rejected, reluctantly acceded; still persisting that nothing but the
rack and the flame, or fatal expulsion, would ever purge Spain from
the horrible infection of so poisonous a race. Isabella heard him with
a shudder; but, thankful even for this ungracious sanction, waited,
with, trembling impatience, the termination of the given fourteen
days; hoping, aye praying in her meek, fervid piety, that the mistaken
one might be softened to accept the proffered grace, or her own heart
strengthened to sacrifice all of personal feeling for the purifying by
fire and consequent salvation, of that immortal soul now so fearfully
led astray.
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