Two systems were in force in the Street of the Money to convince, to convert, and to change the stubborn will.

One, the A B C of all inquisitors, consisted of the indispensable rack, the attractive pulley with the weights for the feet, the useful hooks, the thumbkins, the red-hot pincers, the oil-bath, and the water-torture. Dom Teruel and Frey Tullio, with the aid of Serra the Murcian, used these as a carpenter uses his tools, coldly, and with method.

But the finer mind of Mariana, working for political ends rather than controverting heresy by mere physical methods, had evolved a more purely moral torture. A chamber had been set apart, to which no least noise, either from the street or from the other guests of the Holy Office, could possibly penetrate. The walls had been specially doubled. Iron door after iron door had to be unlocked before even a familiar could enter. In the space between the walls in every side were spy-holes. Painted eyes looked down from the ceiling, up from the floor. The whole chamber was flooded day and night with the light of lamps set deep in niches, so that the prisoner could not reach them. All that he could ever see was the placing of another light as often as the old burned low.

“There is,” Mariana explained the matter to his associates, “a compulsion working in the minds of the well-bred and well-born, of those who have always experienced only pleasantness and happy society, breathed the airs of wood and mountain, known the comradeship of street and class-room and salle-d’armes. Such cannot long be without someone to whom to tell their thoughts. For this unclipped gallant, two or three weeks will suffice. He has the gloss still on his wings. Wait a little. I have my own way with such. He will speak. He will tell us both who he is and all he knows! I will turn him inside out like a glove.”

“I am not sure,” said Teruel, shaking his head; “after the third fainting on the rack, when they see Serra oiling the great wheel that is what few of them can stand. There is virtue in it. It has a persuasive force yes, that is the word, a blessed persuasive force, to make the most stubborn abjure heresy and receive the truth!”

The Jesuit smiled, and waved a plump, womanish hand.

“I have a better means, and a surer!” he said, in gentle reproof.

They looked him in the face. But as often as it came to the tug of wills, this smooth, soft-spoken, smiling priest, with his caressing voice, was master. And well they knew it. He also.

“I have a niece,” Mariana murmured, “one altogether devoted to the service of the Church and the society. I am, for the present, her nearest parent as well as her spiritual director ”

“Valentine la Nina?” questioned Teruel. And Frey Tullio said nothing, only Mariana, ever on the watch, caught the oily southern glitter of his eyes, wicked little black pools, with scum on each, like cooling gravy.

“Ay, indeed, Valentine la Nina, even as you say,” responded the Jesuit of Toledo calmly; “it is not fair that only men should labour for the good of Holy Church. Did not Mary, the wife of Herod’s steward, and that other Mary, minister to the Son of the Holy Virgin? It is so written. If, then, sainted women followed Him in life, watched by His cross, and prepared His body for burial, surely in these evil times, when the Church of Peter trembles on its rock, we, who fight for the faith, have not the right to refuse the ministry of Valentine la Nina or another?”

And so, since Mariana was of Toledo and high in favour with Philip the King, and with the Archbishop Primate of all Spain, besides being more powerful than the General of his own Order, Dom Teruel and Frey Tullio bowed their heads and did as they were commanded.

“Give you the order,” said Teruel to Mariana, with a faint, hateful smile, for he would have preferred Serra, a newly-wetted rope, and a slow fire.

But this was by no means Mariana’s way.

“I but advise,” he said. “How can I do otherwise, a poor Jesuit wanderer, dependent on your bounty for hospitality I and my niece. I fear I must claim also a place for her here, when she leaves the house and protection of the Countess of Livia.”

So into the chamber of light and silence went the Abbe John, after his first examination. He saw around him and above walls and ceilings painted all over with gigantic human eyes the pupil of each being hollow and watchers were set continually without, or, at least, the Abbe John thought they were. Within twelve hours he was raging madly about his cell, striving to reach and shiver those watching eyes everywhere about him. He kicked at the inlaid pavements. He tried to tear away from his bed-head and from the foot, those huge, open eyes with the dark, watchful pupils. But his riding-boots had been removed, and with his hempen alpargatas he could do nothing. No one took the least notice of his cries. Even the walls seemed echoless and dead, save for the watching eyes, which, after the first day, followed him about the room as he paced from end to end, restless as a wild creature newly caged.

He saw them in his sleep. He dreamed of eyes. They chased him across great smoking cities, over plains without mark or bound, save the brown circle of the horizon, through the thick coverts of virgin forests. He could not shut them out. He could not escape them. He covered his face with his hand, and they looked in between his fingers, parting them that they might look. He drew his cloak’s hood about his brow, he heaped coverings on his head. It was all in vain. He began to babble to the walls, till he realised that these had ears as well as eyes. On the fourth day he wept aloud. He had long refused to eat, though he drank much. He began to go mad, and kept repeating the words to himself, “I am going mad! I am going mad!”

On the fifth night he tried to dash his head against the wall. He fainted, and lay a long time motionless on the cold floor, till suddenly, becoming aware that there was a painted eye underneath he sprang to his feet in that terrible place beset with eyes behind and before.

There came to him a noise of unbarring doors, the yellow lamp-light went out in niche after niche.

“Oh, the blessed dark!” cried the Abbe John, “they are going to leave me in the dark. I shall escape from the eyes.”

But no; his tormentors had other purposes with him. A yet greater noise of rollers and the clang of iron machinery, and lo! on high the whole roof of the Place of Eyes fell into two parts (like huge eyelids, thought the Abbe John with a shudder). The sunshine flooded all the upper part of his cell, midway down the walls. The sweet morning air of Spain breathed about him. He felt a cool moisture on his lips, the scent of early flowers. A bee blundered in, boomed round, and went out again as he had come.

The Abbe John clutched his throat as if at the point of death. He thought he saw a vision, and prayed for deliverance, but no more eyes for judgment, but no more eyes for damnation even, but no more eyes!

Then he turned about, and close by the great iron door a woman was standing, the fairest he had ever seen yes, fairer even than Claire Agnew, as fair as they make the pictured angels above the church altars Valentine la Nina!