While Isabella was in her room, a maidservant gave a letter in her handwhich read: “Sister Isabella, I have to talk to you on some important things,so be kind to take the trouble of coming here at once. The matter is very important. You should not delayat all. Just now I am waiting for you anxiously in another house. Please come along with this maidservant. Your sister, Mirano.”Isabella immediately got up to followthe maidservant while suspecting that the letter was not from Mirano, but was a secret conspiracy of the priests. She followed the maidservant on the road which, rounding from the Palace of Martyrs, went straight to Rabat Ramani. At some distance the maidservant turned to a lane and entered a grand house and as soon as she entered all the doors were closed and unsuspecting Isabella was taken to another room whose doors were also closed and Isabella was taken to another room whose doors were also immediately closed. Here Isabella suspected that she probably had been taken prisoner. Then two orthree monks pushed Isabella to the stairs leading to the underground room. Isabella was perturbed and she realised that she was in the grip of the Inquisition. When she put her feet on the stair a monk gave a hard blow on the back of the poor, delicategirl, and said. O accursed one! why do you not go ahead? See that the fireof Lord Jesus Christ’s anger is ready to burn you up. Unlucky girl! you have defamed Christianity and dragged the honour of your father, the head priest, into the mire.Poor Isabella was silent. Shivering and suffering blows on her back she got down to the underground chamber where human skeletons were lying here and there in all corners and human craniums were hanging on the walls. Going inside the monk lighted a lamp and said to Isabella: Now you have to live here so that you may know the consequences of hostility to Lord Jesus Christ. Unluckily girl (pointing to the skeletons), these have been deputed to chastise you.Isabella kept silence and felt as if she was in a dream. In the meantime all the monks went out of the cell after locking it and engaged themselves inprayer and devotion in other rooms. After some time Isabella came to her senses and soon realised that she was put to the tortures of being shut up in this chamber of ghosts becauseof her acceptance of truth.The day passed somehow and darkness of the night enveloped the world. After eighth part of the night Isabella was taken out of the chamber and was given some parched and ground grain with water to drink. The monks even now continued to snub her. Then Isabella was taken to different rooms of the house where monks were engaged invarious devotional exer-cises. The object of this round was to frighten Isabella by the austerities of monks which might appeal to her conscience. Isabella watched all this with great interest. One person was lying bound up in chains and another person was striking him with a lash. Isabella was terrified at this sight and thought that probably he was also a guilty one like herself. She soon found that it was a method of subduing the self, and self-torture was voluntarily taken up by monks. In the large room of the house there was an idol of Virgin Mary, around which monks and nuns were sitting in meditation. Some monks were lying along the wall with faces downward and some were sobbing in a corner ; for subduing the self they had not taken food for the last twenty or twenty-one days. Isabella was aware of these things but had not yet actually witnessed these scenes with her own eyes.An elderly monk said to Isabella: O abandoned girl, if you want to gain salvation, practise such austerities and by these achieve the pleasure of Lord Jesus Christ.Isabella laughed at it and said : Why does God need such austerities ? The purpose of religion is that one should perform the duties which a man has towards other men and serve men, not that he should hang himself in a corner like abat. Further, when, according to you, Jesus has atoned for all Christians, then such austerities are useless.
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