The New Hampshire Gazette

MISCELLANEOUS.
The Inquisition.—The 96th number of the
Lettres Normandes contains the following his-
torical fact :
" General Lasalle, being at Toledo, went to
visit the palace of the inquisition (for in Spain
the inquisitors, like other monks, wear the coars-
est stuff for clothes, and inhabit the most beau-
tiful marble palaces.) At sight of the instruments
of torture, the general, and the soldiers who
accompanied him, shuddered. It was more
horrible than the most dreadful field of battle.
Among these instruments was one, which,
from the species of sacrilege of which it con-
veyed the idea, fixed more particularly the at-
tention of the French officer. In a subter-
raneous prison, near a room which was occupied by
the inquisitor, whose business it was to interro-
gate people accused of heresy, there stood in a
niche the statue of the Virgin Mary. A gol-
den glory surrounded the mother of the redeem-
er of the human race, her right hand held the
oriflamb, a drapery of silk stuff descended from
her shoulder to her feet, and through the
folds of a mantle a sort of cuirass was to be seen.
-This statue seems to be an imitation of the
statue of Joan d'Arc, which is seen at Orleans.
Examining it more closely, they found that the
cuirass of the Virgin was filled with the blades
of knifes and sharp pointed nails. The arms
of the statue were moveable; and when set in
motion by an instrument behind the partition.
The general gave orders to one of the servants
of the inquisition to set this machine in motion
-the bag of a Polish grenadier took the place
of the heretic. The statue caught it in her
arms and squeezed it very closely. When it
was taken away, the bag was found pierced
with holes, the points of the nails and the
knives having penetrated to a considerable
depth. Thus the merciful Mary, the queen
of angels, became in the hands of the inqui-
sitors the bloody minister of fanatical fury : and
that nothing might be wanted to the odious
profanation, they had given, by a sort of play
upon words, the name of Madre dolorosa, to the
terrible statue."