circular stone still preserved. With an obsidian knife, life was instantly extinguished by opening the heart-case and taking out the heart, which was offered to their god of war. This horrid worship, if indeed it ever existed, was suppressed, and one more horrid and cold-blooded in its atrocities substituted. There was seldom wanting a victim on those great occasions, for prisoners who would otherwise have been let off with confiscation of estates and a long imprisonment were now doomed to the flames, to accomplish the double purpose of a spectacle and strike terror into the ranks of the higher classes, who too often furnished the victims. But the higher classes were all present. Suspicion might attach to their absence. And he that dared not breathe aloud in his own bed-chamber, or tell the whole truth at the confessional, from apprehension of an inquisitorial spy, took good heed that no act or look of his on the day of the great fiesta should betray him to this secret, but every where present tribunal, lest he himself should be the sacrificial victim at the next entertainment.
The roasting of a human victim at the auto da fe was a purely democratic institution. The leperos, who were beneath the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, felt none of the terrors that haunted the rich even in night visions. Without the least apprehension, they enjoyed the magnificence of the spectacle, and their hatred toward the high-born was gratified by the sight of one, and sometimes many, respectable persons burned in the fire for their entertainment. They were always ready to manifest their gratitude to the holy office by assailing and perhaps murdering any one who had incurred the displeasure of the priests, but whom it was not politic to arrest. Thus, by a threefold power, did the Inquisition enforce the discipline of the Church: * by the authority of the king and the law, the dread which it inspired;