Exposed to prolonged tortures, the majority confessed palpable absurdities.

One woman at Milan said she had killed four thousand people.

But, says Pier Antonio Marioni, the Venetian envoy, although tormented to the utmost, none of them were capable of revealing the prime instigators of the plot.

So thoroughly convinced was he, together with the whole world, of their guilt, that he never paused to reflect upon the fallacy contained in this remark.

The rack-stretched wretches could not reveal their instigators, because there were none; and the acts of which they accused themselves were the delirious figments of their own torture-fretted brains.