The low murmuring of the
priests could now be heard in prayer and exhortation, with the faint
responses of the prisoners, and now and then the voices of the choir
at a distance, chanting the litanies of the saints.
The faces of the prisoners were ghastly and disconsolate. Even those
who had been pardoned, and wore the Sanbenito, or penitential garment,
bore traces of the horrors they had undergone. Some were feeble and
tottering, from long confinement; some crippled and distorted by
various tortures; every countenance was a dismal page, on which might
be read the secrets of their prison-house. But in the looks of those
condemned to death, there was something fierce and eager. They seemed
men harrowed up by the past, and desperate as to the future. They were
anticipating, with spirits fevered by despair, and fixed and clenched
determination, the vehement struggle with agony and death which they
were shortly to undergo. Some cast now and then a wild and anguished
look about them, upon the shining day; the "sun-bright palaces," the
gay, the beautiful world, which they were soon to quit for ever; or a
glance of sudden indignation at the thronging thousands, happy in
liberty and life, who seemed, in contemplating their frightful
situation, to exult in their own comparative security.
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