But Montoro de Diego had found no one at his elbow but an innocent, wide-eyed child; and Don Miguel only found a crowd of terrified, cringing priests, who with pallid faces and trembling limbs bore off the dying superior to his own apartments, where he lingered two days, blindly giving thanks to God that he had been accepted as a martyr in His cause!
"The enemy of our liberty, our honour, our security is dead," muttered Don Alonso in fierce triumph to Montoro de Diego, as he sought temporary shelter from the dangers of pursuit in his friend's palace. But Don Diego shook his head with prophetic sadness as he answered:
"May the Holy Virgin grant that you have not called down worse evils upon our unhappy city!"
All too soon his fears were realized. The Church was offended, and the sovereigns, at the assassination of the great Inquisitor, and terrible was the vengeance wreaked far and wide upon all who had been, or were supposed to have been, implicated in the impious deed. Hundreds upon hundreds of people died, by torture, in the dungeons, at the stake, by persecutions innumerable, and starvation; and the whole province of Aragon was still further cruelly humiliated in the persons of its nobles, who were condemned in crowds to do penance in the Autos da Fé.
Don Alonso and Don Miguel were hanged instead of burned, not in mercy, but in sign of greater infamy, and that they might feel themselves ground to the very dust by the intense degradation of their punishment. And Don Diego did not escape the general ruin of his friends.
The heat of the search for victims had somewhat abated, when the covetous desires of one of the members of the Inquisition turned upon the possessions of the wealthy nobleman.
A path to the coveted riches was soon found. Montoro de Diego's words were suddenly remembered that he uttered on the night of Don Philip's death—"If Don Philip die others will die with him." On these words he was condemned, first to lingering months in a loathsome dungeon, then to death; and his young wife was driven forth from the gates of Saragossa in widowed penury and despair. The second Montoro de Diego was born a beggar and fatherless, but he had the brave, upright spirit of his father in him for his portion; and with his fortunes our tale is, for the future, concerned.