While his innocence or guilt was debated in Madrid with the utmost acrimony, Ambrosio was a prey to the pangs of conscious villainy, and the terrors of punishment impending over him. When he looked back to the eminence on which he had lately stood, universally honoured and respected, at peace with the world and with himself, scarcely could he believe that he was indeed the culprit whose crimes and whose fate he trembled to envisage. But a few weeks had elapsed, since he was pure and virtuous, courted by the wisest and noblest in Madrid, and regarded by the people with a reverence that approached idolatry: he now saw himself stained with the most loathed and monstrous sins, the object of universal execration, a prisoner of the holy office, and probably doomed to perish in tortures the most severe. He could not hope to deceive his judges: the proofs of his guilt were too strong. His being in the sepulchre at so late an hour, his confusion at the discovery, the dagger which in his first alarm he owned had been concealed by him, and the blood which had spirted upon his habit from Antonia’s wound, sufficiently marked him out for the assassin. He waited with agony for the day of examination: he had no resource to comfort him in his distress.