Seeing the great door open as I was passing, I ventured to enter the central court of the Inquisition, from which the halls of the different tribunals and the chambers of the inquisitors and officials were entered and lighted.
All had now been thoroughly whitewashed and renovated, and bore no marks of the fearful scenes that had been here enacted. When I stood in the hall where its judgments used to be delivered, I had to tax my memory of books to draw a picture of events that here daily transpired in times past.
I saw no Bridge of Sighs, yet the whole institution was founded upon the sighs, and groans, and riven hearts of its victims, of many of whom the world was not worthy.
The rich were the most profitable game, but a beautiful woman was the most acceptable spectacle to a populace debased from infancy by attendance on bull-fights.
A foreigner that had been by special grace licensed to visit Mexico, was considered a fortunate prize, for to offer a foreigner as a human sacrifice was in accordance with the ancient custom of the Aztecs.
There was only one foreigner who amassed great wealth, and that was Laborde the miner, who bought his peace by building the Cathedral of Toluca.
There was nothing to interest a stranger in the empty halls where once these legalized murderers had held their nightly meetings, and I wandered away toward the prison and the place of torture, where, inch by inch, the life had been torn from the victims of priestly vengeance. I shuddered as I entered the prison door-way, though fifty years had passed since the last and most distinguished of its victims had entered here, the Vice-king Iturrigaray.