During this prolonged imprisonment, Fray Luis seems to have been treated with unusual consideration. He was allowed to send for all the books needed for his defence and for study--even for recreation, for we find him, July 6, 1575, asking for the prose works of Bembo, for a Pindar in Greek and Latin and for a copy of Sophocles.[349] He relieved the distractions of his defence and the anxieties of his position by the composition of his _De los Nombres de Christo_, which has remained a classic. Yet these were but slender alleviations of the hardships and despairing tedium of his prison cell. On March 12, 1575, he is begging for the sacraments; though he is no heretic, he says, he has been deprived of them for three years. This petition was forwarded to the Suprema, which replied by drily telling the tribunal to complete the cases of Fray Luis, Grajal and Martínez as soon as opportunity would permit.[350] At an audience of August 20th, of the same year, when remanded to his cell, he paused to represent that, as the inquisitors well knew, he was very sick with fever; there was no one in his cell to take care of him, save a fellow-prisoner, a young boy who was simple; one day he fainted through hunger, as there was no one to give him food, and he asked whether a fraile of his Order could be admitted to assist him and to aid him to die, unless they wished him to die alone in his cell. This was not refused but, as the condition was imposed that the companion should as usual share his imprisonment to the end, the request was in vain. Then, on September 12th, in his reply to the five propositions suddenly sprung upon him, he feelingly referred to the years of prison and the sufferings caused by the absence of comforts in his weakness and sickness, as a torture long and cruel enough to purge all suspicions.[351] Even more pitiful was a petition to the Suprema in November of the same year--"I supplicate your most illustrious body, by Jesus Christ, on my giving ample security, to order me to be placed in one of the convents of this city, even in that of San Pablo (Dominican), in any way that it may please you, until sentence is rendered, so that if, during this time, God should call me, which I greatly fear, in view of my much trouble and feeble health, I may die as a Christian among religious persons, aided by their prayers and receiving the sacraments, and not as an infidel, alone in prison with a Moor at my bed-side. And since the rancor of my enemies and my own sins have deprived me of all that is desirable in life, may the Christian piety of your most illustrious body give me this consolation in death, for I ask nothing more."[352] It is perhaps needless to say that this touching appeal did not even receive an answer. [Sidenote: _LUIS DE LEON_]