the Pope, laid the case before him, and besought the penalty of excommunication to be fulminated against the hypocrite who had dared to use, as cover for most atrocious villany, the pure and sacred ordinances of the church. Alexander the Sixth, himself a worker of such awful crimes that he was little capable of entering into the pure and elevated character of the Sub-Prior, heard him calmly, smiled sneeringly, and then informed him, he was too late. The worthy and zealous servant of Rome, known to men as Don Luis Garcia, had been before him, made confession of certain passions as exciting erring deeds, to which all men were liable, had done penance, received absolution, and was in a fair way of rising to the highest eminence in the church.
Father Francis remonstrated, urged, dared to speak bolder truths than had ever before reached the papal ear but all without effect: and this truly good and spiritual man returned to Spain stricken to the dust. He reported the failure of his mission; heard, with bowed head and aching soul, the natural indignation of Ferdinand, and the quieter, but to him, still more expressive sorrow, at this fearful abuse of her holy religion from Isabella; and then, with an earnestness impossible to be resisted, conjured the royal permission to retire entirely from all interference in public life. He could not, he said, support the weight of shame, which, falling on his church, had affected him individually. Vain were the royal solicitations, vain the love of the people, vain the entreaties of the abbot and brethren of his convent; he resigned the office of Sub-Prior, relinquished every religious and secular honor, and buried himself in the most impenetrable solitude, fraught with austerity and mortification, personal penance, and yet devoted to such extraordinary acquirements, that, though for long years his very existence was well nigh forgotten, when next he burst upon the astonished eyes of the world, it was no longer as Father Francis, the Sub-Prior of a Franciscan monastery, a good and benevolent monk, but as the learned priest, the sagacious statesman, the skilful general, ay, and gallant warrior—the great and good CARDINAL XIMENES!
To wait the arrival of Torquemada, the sovereigns and their council unanimously resolved. It was but a very brief delay, and would permit a more effectual extermination of the secret office than could be decided upon by the laity alone. Ere the day closed, and in presence of the sovereigns, of all the nobles, officers of state, the Santa Hermandad and principal citizens,