But even this free-will offering brought no quiet, for a new quarrel soon arose between the Bishop and the unlucky wielder of the temporal power. The Society of the Holy Sacrament enjoyed an _encomienda_ at or near Asuncion. The Bishop, no doubt thinking he was most fitted to indoctrinate the Indians, endeavoured to persuade the Governor to get the Society of the Holy Sacrament to make their Indians over to himself. The Governor, who knew his fellow-countrymen, flatly refused, and upon this Don Bernardino fell into a fury, and reproached him with such bitterness that Don Gregorio, too, overstepped the bounds of prudence, and threw the conduct of his nephew with the ‘jeune femme bien faite’ into the Bishop’s teeth. Hell has been said to have no fury equal to a woman scorned, but a Bishop thwarted makes a very tolerable show. Don Bernardino was one of those who think an insult to themselves carries with it a challenge to God, an outrage on religion, and generally conceive the honour of Heaven is attacked by any contradiction of themselves. To animadvert upon the actions of a Bishop’s nephew is as bad as heresy—far worse than simony—and the man who does it cannot but be a heretic at heart. So, at least, Don Bernardino thought; for, with candle, bell, and book, and what was requisite, he excommunicated the poor Governor, and declared him incompetent to bear the royal standard in a religious festival which was shortly to take place. Excommunication was at least as serious then as bankruptcy is now, though in Spanish America it did not carry with it such direful consequences as in European States.