Tortured with feet to the firedetails

[...] the first stranger reappeared, and beckoning with his finger, the party passed through the door to a little vestibule, the further end of which was closed by a heavy dark-red curtain; upon this being drawn aside, a most dreadful scene presented itself. In a capacious prison room, hung around with manacles and instruments of torture, were seven persons: one stripped to hus under garments, lay extended on the floor, having his legs passed through a pair of heavy wooden stocks; behind this a charcoal fire was burning, and was placed in such a positionas slwlowly to roast the soles of the victim’s feet, who writhed in front with the greatest agony. Two monnks knelt before the head of the tortured man, one urging him to make confession, and the other with a pen and tablet, taking down the groan words that fell from his parvched lips. Looking on in haughty cold, and impassable stoicism, stood Gradianio, the Doge of Venice, and behind him three members of that execrable council, who preserved rule by secrecy and terror, and by abominable practices such as these now in action. The brothers recoiled at the sight. The groans of the wretch appalled them as he fainted in agony. “It is enough for the present,” said the Doge. “Bear him away, and pass we to the Hall of Justice.”

(p. 161)

It preaches an instructive lesson, name.y, that when states are attempted to be sustained by wickedness and cruelty their foundations are upon a quicksand, that may at any moment engulf them.