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aries, Capitalists and Merchants, Traders and men of all classes and conditions of society.

The rear of the procession was brought up by a Corps of Cavalry, with band and timbrels which never ceased playing.

The Procession to the Act of Faith halted in front of all the Oratories and the images of Saints which stood upon its passage, and thus a considerable time elapsed before it arrived at the Largo de Santa Anna.

The banners were flown and the drums ruffled. Each member of the cortège took the place allotted to him. A crier read aloud the list of those condemned to the stake and to the garotte, and of the penitents sentenced to be present at the execution. Amongst the latter was the name of the unhappy Manuel de Moraes, spared capital punishment by the especial grace of Dom João. An ecclesiastic then offered up a prayer to Heaven; all around him reverently kneeling and interceding for the souls which were about to leave this world.

The last orders were given. The victims condemned to the flames mounted the pyres by ladders, and were bound to wooden stakes planted in the midst of the faggots. Fire applied to the straw at once spread to the whole pyre. Arose a pitchy cloud of smoke licked by tongues of flame, and every ear shrank from the screams and shrieks and moans of unutterable anguish, which ceased only when the wretches disappeared in a sheet of consuming fire.

To this succeeded the more merciful penalty of the garotte. The hangman, by one turn of the winch, instantly strangled and dislocated the necks of the less guilty. Their mortal remains, however, were cast upon the still burning piles, that the condemned might all be confounded in one common doom.

Lastly, a Procession of the pardoned penitents walked round the stakes and the gallows. Most of them were supported by the Familiars and the ser-