When three days' notice of impending relaxation was given, the time was utilized to the utmost. There was a pertinacious heretic to suffer in the Seville auto of December 10, 1719--a Moorish slave, baptized under the name of Francisco Andrés, who had renegaded and was persistent when his sentence was made known to him. Then twelve calificadores--two each from the Orders of Mercenarians, Minims, Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and Jesuits--with eight familiars were assigned to his conversion. They were successful and he escaped with prison and sanbenito for four years.[576] A remarkable case, at the Seville auto of July 5, 1722, shows however that, after delivery to the secular arm, the Inquisition considered that its functions were ended. There were four pertinacious Jews, two men and two women. Nine calificadores and eleven familiars labored with them in vain during the three days; they persisted through the reading of the sentences and were delivered to the secular magistrate. The two men and the elder of the women succumbed at the last, professed conversion and were garrotted and burnt. The younger woman, known as La Almiranta, at the brasero begged audience of the deputy assistente, told him that she desired to confess and give evidence as to other Jews and was remanded to the royal prison. Word was sent to the tribunal, which replied that it had nothing further to do with her. She was kept until the 7th and, when taken to the brasero was more pertinacious, than ever, saying that, as her companions had died as Catholics, they were accursed and that she had pretended to yield in order that her ashes, which were holy, should not be mingled with theirs. Of course she had the martyrdom which she craved.[577] In exceptional cases pertinacity seems to have been allowed the privilege of preliminary strangulation. At a Valladolid auto of May 29, 1691, there were five pertinacious women condemned for Judaism, described as being from 24 to 27 years of age and very handsome, who excited general compassion. On being delivered to the magistrate two of them weakened, while three persisted in their faith, yet they were all garrotted before burning.[578] A large portion of the cases of pertinacity arose from the death in prison, during trial, of those who did not ask on the death-bed for the consolations of religion, and who had no opportunity of obtaining mercy by conversion. Thus in the Granada auto of May 13, 1725, out of seven burnings in effigy, six were of those who had died in prison.[579] Suicide in prison was treated harshly, for Simancas tells us that the suicide is to be condemned as fully convicted and impenitent, even though he had previously confessed and professed repentance, to which Rojas adds that, although his effigy is to be burnt, his heirs are allowed to prove insanity, difficult as that is.[580] * * * * * [Sidenote: _THE NEGATIVO--THE DIMINUTO_]