The sleepless torture, invented by Marsilius, was worked by forcing the
accused into an angular frame of wood about five feet high, the sufferer
being stripped and his arms tied behind his back to the frame; two men,
relieved every five hours, sat beside him, and roused him the moment he
closed his eyes. Marsilius says he has never found a man proof against
this torture; but here he claims more than he is justly entitled to.
Farinacci states that, out of one hundred accused persons subjected to
it, five only refused to confess--a very satisfactory result for the
inventor.

Lastly comes the torture of the rope and pulley, the most in vogue of
all, and known in other Latin countries as the strappado.

It was divided into three degrees of intensity--the slight, the severe,
and the very severe.

The first, or slight torture, which consisted mainly in the
apprehensions it caused, comprised the threat of severe torture,
introduction into the torture chamber, stripping, and the tying of
the rope in readiness for its appliance. To increase the terror these
preliminaries excited, a pang of physical pain was added by tightening a
cord round the wrists. This often sufficed to extract a confession from
women or men of highly strung nerves.

The second degree, or severe torture, consisted in fastening the
sufferer, stripped naked, and his hands tied behind his back, by the
wrists to one end of a rope passed round a pulley bolted into the
vaulted ceiling, the other end being attached to a windlass, by turning
which he could be hoisted into the air, and dropped again, either slowly