On the threshold of her tomb Isabella de Siguenza paused and looked
round wildly as though for help, scanning each of the silent watchers to
find a friend among them. Then her eye fell upon the niche and the heap
of smoking lime and the men who guarded it, and she shuddered and would
have fallen had not those who attended her led her to the chair and
placed her in it--a living corpse.
Now the dreadful rites began. The Dominican father stood before her and
recited her offence, and the sentence that had been passed upon her,
which doomed her, 'to be left alone with God and the child of your sin,
that He may deal with you as He sees fit.'* To all of this she seemed to
pay no heed, nor to the exhortation that followed. At length he ceased
with a sigh, and turning to me said:
'Draw near to this sinner, brother, and speak with her before it is too
late.'
* Lest such cruelty should seem impossible and
unprecedented, the writer may mention that in the museum of
the city of Mexico, he has seen the desiccated body of a
young woman, which was found immured in the walls of a
religious building. With it is the body of an infant.
Although the exact cause of her execution remains a matter
of conjecture, there can be no doubt as to the manner of her
death, for in addition to other evidences, the marks of the
rope with which her limbs were bound in life are still
distinctly visible.
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