olable
rights. They stormed the palace of the Grand Justiciary, demanded that
he should defend the fueros, to whose guardianship he had been elected.
Receiving no satisfaction, they attacked the palace of the Inquisition,
clamouring insistently that I should immediately be returned to the
Justiciary's prison, whence I had so unwarrantably been taken.

The Inquisitors remained firm a while, but the danger was increasing
hourly. In the end they submitted, for the sake of their skins, and
considering, no doubt, a later vengeance for this outrage upon their
holy authority. But it was not done until faggots had been stacked
against the Holy House, and the exasperated mob had threatened to burn
them out of it.

"Castilian hypocrites!" had been the insurgent roar. "Surrender your
prisoner, or you shall be roasted in the fire in which you roast so
many!"

Blood was shed in the streets. The King's representative died of wounds
that he received in the affray, whilst the Viceroy himself was assailed
and compelled to intervene and procure my deliverance.

For the moment I was out of danger. But for the moment only. There was
no question now of my enlargement. The Grand Justiciary, intimidated
by what had taken place, by the precise expression of the King's
will, dared not set me at liberty. And then the Holy Office, under the
direction of the King, went to work in that subterranean way which it
has made its own; legal quibbles were raised to soothe the sensibilities
of the Aragonese with respect to my removal from the Justiciary's prison
to that of the Holy Office. Strong forces of troops were brought to
Saragossa to overawe the plebeian insolence, and so, by the following
September, all the preliminaries being concluded, the Inquisition came
in force and in form to take possession of me.

The mob looked on and murmured; but it was intimidated by the show of
ordered force; it had perhaps tired a little of the whole affair, and
did not see that it should shed its blood and lay up trouble for itself
for the sake of one who, after all, was of no account in the affairs of
Aragon. I stood upon the threshold of my ruin. All my activities were
to go unrewarded. Doom awaited me. And then the unexpected happened.
The alguazil of the Holy Office was in the very act of setting the gyves
upon my legs when the first shot was fired, followed almost at once by a
fusillade.

It was Gil de Mesa, faithfullest servant that ever any man possess