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Everywhere the funeral pyres of the Inquisition flared to the skies, the air was rent by the despairing shrieks of martyrs enveloped in flames or racked by tortures, the prisons overflowed with Marranos, all instruments of torture were vigorously plied. At last the hour of redemption struck: in 1492 all Jews were driven from Spain, and a few years later from Portugal.
According to all sound analogy, this should have stopped the dear fellow's earthly tracks; but his spirit was such that he simply went away to nurse himself up in retirement. Neither man nor dog can tell what agonies he suffered; and doubtless his tortures of mind about duty unperformed were the worst of all. These things are out of human knowledge in its present unsympathetic state.
A true author is the singer and dreamer of society; and who is there more dependent than the singer and the dreamer who is there less powerful and less cunning in the things of the body? Why, the author gives up his whole life for your joy and help, he consecrates himself, he lashes and burns and tortures himself for your sake! And you spurn him from you, and tell him he is "independent"!
In 1597 she was offered an exceedingly good position by the Inquisition, which she immediately accepted. It was, she felt, her only chance of happiness to have the opportunity of inventing a few good tortures would comfort her; and why not? People of to-day, narrow and unsympathetic, may censure her as being spiteful and unkind, but in those days things were oh, so different!
They were like a couple of Sioux who had got hold of an Apache and had him well tied to a stake. I tell you there was no end to the tortures they inflicted upon him. Night after night he would hear them talking; talking; maddened, sweating, seeking oblivion in drink, he would lie there and hear the voices going on and on.
He cared no more for his vanished reputation. His only thought was how to get out. Meantime the congregation was variously affected. Some held down their heads and laughed immoderately. These were mostly of Mr Malison's scholars, the fine edge of whose nature, if it ever had any, had vanished under the rasp of his tortures.
No, I do not renounce; I love everyone who pleases me, and give happiness to everyone who loves me. Is that ugly? No, it is more beautiful by far, than if cruelly I enjoy the tortures, which my beauty excites, and virtuously reject the poor fellow who is pining away for me. I am young, rich, and beautiful, and I live serenely for the sake of pleasure and enjoyment."
Aimlessness, as my friend Ned said, is a miserable state for a man; it tortures him in prison, and the habit of it, acquired in prison, cripples and degrades him after he gets out. Contract labor is a crime which is getting recognized as such; it disgraces the nation or the state which tolerates it, and the shame of it, if not its immorality, may lead to its general suppression.
For this he had let himself be enticed seventeen times, like a patient sheep, into that confounded room with the glass walls and the shining instruments? A shudder ran down his back at the recollection of the tortures he had gone through with clenched teeth, just to look like a human being again and be able to go back home to his bride. And now he was home.
The result was that a rigorous investigation was made into the whole affair; a great number of persons were tried for attempting the king's life by witchcraft; and that prince, undeterred by the apparent impropriety of being judge in what was, in reality, his own cause, presided at many of the trials, condescended to superintend the tortures applied to the accused in order to extort a confession, and even went so far in one case as to write a letter to the judges commanding a condemnation.
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