They press him further on the subject, but he can only repeat what he has already said—that as the Francos travel a great deal with their carts, they may have found the boy on one of their journeys.
As no more is to be extracted from him on the subject, they now change the line of examination, and seek information concerning other Judaizing practices of the Francos of La Guardia, asking Yucé what he knows upon this matter.
He answers that about six years ago the Francos, to his own knowledge, kept the Feast of the Tabernacles and gave the beggar Perejon money to buy a trumpet which was to be sounded on the seventh day of the feast, as is proper. He knows, further, that they sit down to meat prepared in the Jewish manner, over which they utter Jewish prayers—the Beraká and the Hamoçi—and that they are believed to have kept the great fast and to give money for the purchase of oil for the synagogue.[194]
Asked further to explain the oath of secrecy which he says was imposed upon him and to which he has said that his past silence has been due, he states that all were solemnly sworn by Tazarte that under no circumstances would they utter a word of what was done in the cave between Dosbarrios and La Guardia until they should have been one year in the prison of the Inquisition, and that even should the torture betray them into infidelity to their oath, they must refuse to ratify afterwards, and deny what they might have divulged.
M. Isidore Loeb clung so tenaciously to the theory that the affair of the “Santo Niño” was trumped up by Torquemada that he would not permit his convictions to be shaken by the revelations contained in these records of Yucé’s trial when they came to light. He fastens upon this statement of Yucé’s and denounces such an oath as a flagrant absurdity, concluding thence that here, as elsewhere, Yucé is lying.[195]
M. Loeb’s criticisms of this dossier are worthy of too much attention to be lightly passed over, and we shall return presently to the consideration of them.
In the meanwhile we may permit ourselves a digression here to consider just this point upon which he bases so much argument for the purpose of proving false the rest of the story.
If we were to agree with M. Loeb that Yucé is lying in this instance, that would still prove nothing as to the rest—and it would be very far from proving that Torquemada is the inventor of the whole affair. Assuming that this tale of an oath of silence to endure for one year after arrest is a falsehood, it may very well be urged that it is employed by Yucé in the hope that it will excuse his having hitherto withheld information and that it will induce the inquisitors to deal leniently with him for that same silence. Let it be observed that he prefaces his confession with that excuse at the time of asking the inquisitors to give him an undertaking that they will pardon him if he divulges all that he knows.
But is he really lying?