they did all they could to persuade them to love and honor him--first by

twisting their thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by nipping their

flesh with pincers--red-hot ones, because they are the most comfortable

in cold weather; then by skinning them alive a little, and finally by

roasting them in public. They always convinced those barbarians. The

true religion, properly administered, as the good Mother Church used to

administer it, is very, very soothing. It is wonderfully persuasive,

also. There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts

and stirring up their finer feelings in an Inquisition. One is the

system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened, civilized

people. It is a great pity the playful Inquisition is no more.

I prefer not to describe St. Peter's. It has been done before. The

ashes of Peter, the disciple of the Saviour, repose in a crypt under the

baldacchino. We stood reverently in that place; so did we also in the

Mamertine Prison, where he was confined, where he converted the soldiers,

and where tradition says he caused a spring of water to flow in order

that he might baptize them. But when they showed us the print of Peter's

face in the hard stone of the prison wall and said he made that by

falling up against it, we doubted. And when, also, the monk at the

church of San Sebastian showed us a paving-stone with two great

footprints in it and said that Peter's feet made those, we lacked

confidence again. Such things do not impress one. The monk said that

angels came and liberated Peter from prison by night, and he started away

from Rome by the Appian Way. The Saviour met him and told him to go

back, which he did. Peter left those footprints in the stone upon which

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The Innocents Abroad