The rule thus expressed presents two points, the development of which requires separate consideration. As regards the time of confessing and begging mercy, which the Instructions limit to the period prior to the rendering of the sentence, this was extended to the time of reading of the sentence at the auto de fe. Yet this was grudgingly admitted by the Instructions of 1561, which say that often when convicts on the staging profess conversion the inquisitors receive them to reconciliation, but this ought rarely to be done, for it is a very perilous thing which should be suspected to come from dread of death rather than from true repentance.[558] Yet, in spite of this warning, it was customary to suspend proceedings with those who, at the auto de fe, before the reading of their sentences, claimed to be penitent. They were remanded to the Inquisition and, if they confessed fully as to themselves and others, they were reconciled with appropriate punishment. Such cases were of constant occurrence; in the Córdova auto of April 12, 1722, there were four. Even while the sentence was being read, the doubt was thrown in favor of the culprit, as in the Murcia auto of May 17, 1722, when Inez Alvárez Pereira, convicted as an impenitent Judaizer, begged mercy during the reading of her sentence, professed that she wished to confess and be converted, and was sent back to prison, where she was reconciled.[559] In fact, in public autos, where there were convicts to be relaxed, there was always a room arranged under the staging to which the repentant culprit was at once transferred and one of the inquisitors descended to take his confession before he should have time to change his good resolutions. In such cases reconciliation was accompanied with confiscation, irremissible prison and sanbenito and usually one or two hundred lashes for tardy confession.[560] The Instructions of 1561 were justified in claiming that little reliance was to be placed on conversions thus obtained. For the most part the awful experience led penitents, who thus escaped, to cherish their beliefs in secret, but occasionally there was one whose conscience could not pardon the weakness that led to a betrayal of faith. Diego López Duro, an humble retailer of tobacco, condemned for Judaism, recanted while on the staging and was reconciled with imprisonment. In 1700, one day, when hearing mass, he stood apart from his fellow-prisoners and, in a loud voice, told the priest that he lied for the Law of Moses was the only true one. He would have been slain on the spot had he not been hurried out to save him from popular wrath, but for him there could be no mercy. The inquisitors labored long to save his soul by inducing him to recant without success; he was pertinacious to the last and was burnt alive in the Seville auto of October 28, 1703--one of those martyrs whose constancy explains why Judaism has been indestructible.[561] [Sidenote: _GARROTTING BEFORE BURNING_]