thus hide ourselves from the sight of God? Do you think 'with those debauched women among you, who believe that, having once locked up their rosaries and their reliquaries, they may give themselves up, without fear of blame, to all sorts of excess? Come, Sir, entertain loftier sentiments of the Divinity, and do not think that a bit of cloth can conceal our sins from the eyes of God, who sees clearly the most 'secret thoughts of our hearts. Besides, what is this crucifix, • but a piece of ivory?" But the fifth and most flagrant of

his crimes, he states thus :

Being in an assembly, where they were talking of human justice, I said that it ought far rather to be called injustice; that men, judging only according to appearances, which are often deceitful, are liable to err greatly in their judgments, and that, as God alone knows things as they are, he alone can be, or ought to be called, truly just. One of those who heard me interposed, and said that, generally speaking, what I had said was true; but still that this distinction ought to be made, that though in France there were no real justice to be found, they had this advantage over us, that among them there was a tribunal whose decisions were neither less just, nor less infallible, than those of Jesus Christ. Then, knowing well that he alluded to the Inquisition, "think you, (said I) that the Inquisitors are not men, and subject to human passions, as well as other judges ?" Speak not thus," answered this zealous defender of the Holy Office; "if the Inquisitors are infallible while on the tribunal, it is because the Holy Spirit always directs their decisions." I could not any longer endure a discourse which seemed to me so unreasonable, and to prove to him by an example that the Inquisitors were very different from what he said, I related the story of Father Ephraim de Nevers,* Capuchin and Missionary Apostolic in the Indies, who, as is related by M. de la Boulaye le Goux, in his travels, was brought before the Inquisition purely through envy, about seventeen years ago, and kept in confinement, and maltreated for a long time. I concluded by saying, that I had no doubt, but that this good father was more virtuous and more enlightened than those who shut him up in a narrow cell, without permitting him even to see his breviary. I added that Í considered it a blessed thing for France never to have admitted this severe tribunal, and a blessed thing for myself not to be subject to its jurisdiction."

Not so fast, good Monsieur Dellon. The gentlemen of the Holy Office did not recognize "the inalienable birth-right" of a Frenchman. You were now within their territory, and they had a "Black Act" ready to grasp you within the arms of their

*Of this Father Ephraim, we find a pretty full account in Tavernier, p. 85, of the English translation, folio edition, 1678.-Ed. C. R.

Having

paternal jurisdiction. We return to the narrative. learned in some way that charges had been brought against him, our author went to his friend the Commissary, told him the whole story, and asked his advice as to the line of conduct that he should pursue in future. The Commissary gave him good advice, which may be all summed up in the worldly-wise maxim, to do, while at Rome, as Rome does. This advice might perhaps, be given sincerely; but the Governor and the priest, of whom we spoke, rivals though they were, having made common cause against M. Dellon, urged the Commissary to proceed to violent measures. He therefore reported to Goa what had been confided to him by our author, and received orders to arrest him. The account of his apprehension is touching, and it is simply told :

"It was on the 24th of August, 1673, when I was returning from the house of a lady of great merit, the Senora Donna Francisca Pereira, the wife of one of the first gentlemen of the town, Manoel Peixote de Gama. This lady was about sixty years of age. She considered herself indebted to me for saving the lives of her eldest daughter and her grand-daughter; and in fact, I had had the happiness to be of service to them. The daughter had fallen sick while her mother was from home; and the imprudence of a Pandit or Indian Doctor had reduced her to the last extremity, when I was called. I undertook the treatment of the case, and she recovered. The mother on her return was in raptures at the recovery of her dear daughter. Her grand-daughter, who was even more dear to her, fell sick also, and more dangerously than her aunt had been. Yet I was not sent for at first, to see this young patient; and they had recourse to me only when they saw that she was in a desperate state. I found her in a very violent fever, and though she was on the point of falling into frenzy, the Indian Doctor, far from thinking of bleeding her, had covered her head with pepper. This I had removed, and having taken charge of the case, I succeeded and the patient, in a few days, was restored to perfect health. From that time this lady, penetrated with gratitude, loaded me with presents, and desiring that I should lodge near her, she had given me a house opposite to her own. It was on the very day of which I speak, that she had given me this house; and I was coming out from the house of this generous lady, to return at night to my lodging, when the criminal judge of the town, called in Portuguese the Owidor do crime, came in front of me, and ordered me to follow him to the prison, whither I was conducted; nor was I told by whose order I was apprehended, until after I was actually made fast."

When arrested by the criminal judge, M. Dellon thought that he had no more to do than to apply to his friend, the Governor, in order to be set at liberty. When told that his arrest

was at the instance of the Holy Office, and that the Governor had no right to interfere, he bethought him of his friend, the Commissary; but he had gone that day to Goa. Then he had recourse to the reflexion that the Holy Office was not only just, but that it inclined ever to the side of mercy, especially towards those who voluntarily confessed their faults, as he had done of his own accord to the Commissary.

The bitterest stanza, in one of the keenest satires ever written, represents the arch-enemy of mankind as joyfully taking a hint from an unreformed English prison for the improvement of his places of torment.

He passed by Cold-bath-fields,

Says the devil, this pleases me well;

And he took out his note book, and wrote a hint,
For improving his prisons in hell.*

How he would have delighted in the sight of the prison of Daman! Without sarcasm and in bitter earnest, it must be said that such scenes, in which man treats his fellow-men-made in the image and after the likeness of the great God-as base carrion, that it is such scenes as these that make devils laugh with joy, and call down at last the indignation of a longsuffering God on a guilty land. As nothing but the hope of curing evils justifies the exhibition of that which is filthy, we gladly draw a veil over the disgusting details.

Here however his friends came to see him, and kept up his spirits. His friend, the Governor, came and assured him of his readiness to do all in his power to help him; and his friend, the black priest, came to the grating and shed crocodiles' tears. His friend Donna Francisca did not content herself with false words and hypocritical tears. It would not have been suitable for her to come to him, but here is what she did :

"The charitable care that the generous Donna Francisca took of me during all the time that I continued a prisoner at Daman, rendered my captivity a little more tolerable. This illustrious lady did not content herself with sending me what was necessary for me: but I received from her every day enough of food for four persons. She prepared my food herself, and always sent one of her grandsons along with the slave who brought it to me, for fear that any one might bribe her servants, or the jailer, to poison me; and as she could not come herself to comfort me in my prison, she took care that her husband, her children, or her son-in-law should come every day."

* This quotation was made from memory, and, as we see by subsequent reference to the original, made incorrectly; but we let it stand as it is, not because we think that our unintentional alteration is an improvement, but because it makes it more appropriate to the matter in hand,

A good, motherly, likeable old lady was Donna Francisca ; and well was it for our author to have such a friend. How much he was indebted to her, will appear from the following extract, in continuation of the preceding

“It was not so with the other prisoners. There being no subsistence allowed them at Daman, the Magistrates provided for them from the charity of any one who might please to help them; and as there were but two persons in the town who regularly gave them food twice a week, the most part of the prisoners, getting nothing on the other days, were reduced to so pitiable a condition, that the sight of them contributed not a little to lessen my sense of my own sufferings. I gave all that I could spare from my own allowance; but there were wretches in the other apartment, separated from me only by a wall, who were pressed with hunger, to the point of subsisting on their own excrements. I learned on this occasion that some years before, about fifty Malabar Corsairs being taken and shut up in this prison, the horrible hunger that they suffered drove more than forty of them to strangle themselves with their turbans.

"The extremity to which my poor fellow-prisoners were reduced, so excited my compassion, that I wrote to the Governor, and the principal persons of the town, who afterwards had the goodness to send relief to those miserable victims of the Sacred Office."

Of course, we do not regard hunger as the only evil that can fall to the lot of man; but we have little sympathy with those who represent it as a trifling evil. It is all very well for young poets and young lovers to talk lightly of such matters; and perhaps, after all, for a man who has had a good breakfast in the morning, and a mutton chop and a glass (or two) of sherry for tiffin, it is not so mighty an evil to have but a scanty dinner. But we know from experience that it is not a small matter to have half rations for days and weeks together; and we can tell all such as may doubt this assertion, that their doubts will probably be removed, if ever it be their fortune to be constrained to make the experiment.

It will be remembered that our author's arrest took place on the 24th of August, 1673. If he had been sent at once to Goa, he might have been tried, and got out of prison, three months after, at the Auto da Fè in December; but this would not have suited the plans of his friends, the Governor and the black priest; and their friend, the Commissary, kept him at Daman until this was over. It was therefore not until the first day of the following year, that he was sent to Goa, heavily ironed. He landed there on the 14th, and on the 16th was brought into the august presence of the Grand Inquisitor, his irons having been first taken off. Here his bearing, we must confess, was not particularly dignified. He threw himself on his knees before his judge, wept SEPT., 1857.

M

bitterly, and declared his willingness to make a full confession. The judge quietly told him to compose himself, that there was no occasion for any such haste, and that he had at that moment more pressing business than his to attend to. He then rang a silver bell, which brought in the Alcaide, to whose care he was committed. This functionary, after searching him, conducted him into a cell ten feet square, and there left him. His treatment here was not intolerable, except as regarded the strictness and the solitude of his confinement. His diet was meagre indeed, but not insufficient. But no books, or means of employment or relaxation, were allowed to him, or to any of the prisoners of the Inquisition. Even priests were not allowed the use of a breviary, or any other book.

The mode of examination in the Courts of the Inquisition has become proverbial; but probably many use the phrase "Inquisitorial proceedings," who have but a vague idea of the course of procedure which gave rise to it. M. Dellon enables us to throw some light on the subject.

Any person accused before the Holy Office, could not be convicted, unless his guilt were established by the testimony of no fewer than seven witnesses. Now this promised fairly. But how was the promise kept? These witnesses were never brought face to face with the accused. He never learned their names, or the substance of the testimony that they gave against him. They might be, for aught he knew, existent or non-existent; and we confess that we are not charitable enough to suppose that the latter might not frequently be the case. When the accused was brought before the Court, no indictment was laid against him. He was asked if he knew of any offence that he had committed. If he could remember any instance in which he had offended. against the laws, and if he made a full confession of his offence, then his confession was compared with the depositions that had been made regarding him, and the process ended; but if his confession related to another matter altogether, or if it did not cover the full ground occupied by the depositions, he was sent back to his solitary cell, to bethink himself in preparation for another examination. This might go on for an indefinite period at the discretion of the Inquisitors; and when they despaired of being able to make the accusation and the confession coincide, they had recourse to torture of the intensest kind. When a prisoner acknowledged the crime of which he had been accused, he was required to name the persons that he supposed might be the witnesses against him. He probably named many before the actual seven occurred to him; and thus valuable hints were given to the Inquisitors. The persons named must have had more or less complicity with the crime of the person accus