attentions of this
dread tribunal had sufficed to drive some thousands of them out of the
city, to seek refuge in such feudal lordships as those of the Duke of
Medina Sidonia, the Marquis of Cadiz, and the Count of Arcos.

This exodus had led to the publication by the newly appointed
inquisitors of the edict of 2nd January, in which they set forth
that inasmuch as it had come to their knowledge that many persons had
departed out of Seville in fear of prosecution upon grounds of heretical
pravity, they commanded the nobles of the Kingdom of Castile that within
fifteen days they should make an exact return of the persons of both
sexes who had sought refuge in their lordships or jurisdictions; that
they arrest all these and lodge them in the prison of the Inquisition in
Seville, confiscating their property, and holding it at the disposal
of the inquisitors; that none should shelter any fugitive under pain
of greater excommunication and of other penalties by law established
against abettors of heretics.

The harsh injustice that lay in this call to arrest men and women merely
because they had departed from Seville before departure was in any way
forbidden, revealed the severity with which the inquisitors intended to
proceed. It completed the consternation of the New-Christians who had
remained behind, and how numerous these were may be gathered from the
fact that in the district of Seville alone they numbered a hundred
thousand, many of them occupying, thanks to the industry and talent
characteristic of their race, positions of great eminence. It even
disquieted the well-favoured young Don Rodrigo de Cardona, who in all
his vain, empty, pampered and rather vicious life had never yet known
perturbation. Not that he was a New-Christian. He was of a lineage that
went back to the Visigoths, of purest red Castilian blood, untainted by
any strain of that dark-hued, unclean fluid alleged to flow in Hebrew
veins. But it happened that he was in love with the daughter of the
millionaire Diego de Susan, a girl whose beauty was so extraordinary
that she was known throughout Seville and for many a mile around as
la Hermosa Fembra; and he knew that such commerce--licit or illicitly
conducted--was disapproved by the holy fathers. His relations with the
girl had been perforce clandestine, because the disapproval of the holy
fathers was matched in thoroughness by that of Diego de Susan. It had
been vexatious enough on that account not to