Two excommunications in a week were almost, one would think, enough to satisfy a Pope; but having nominated one Diego Hernandez, a Portuguese, to the post of Alguacil Mayor of the Inquisition, and given him the right to wear a sword in virtue of his office, the Governor, meeting the man in the street wearing a sword against his regulations, made him a prisoner. At once Don Bernardino launched another excommunication. But this time he had gone too far; the Governor laughed at his thunder, and condemned the prisoner to be hanged. At his wits’ end, the Bishop sent a servant to the man, and told him to fear nothing, for that, if he suffered death, he was a martyr, and that he himself would preach his funeral sermon. The Governor, who was perhaps a humorist, laughed at the message, which, he said, was not consoling, and then himself let Hernandez out of prison under heavy bail. The excommunication was then taken off, and peace once more reigned in Asuncion. As well as being not given to wine, it is essential that a Bishop shall know how to keep his own counsel—as Lorenzo Gracian expresses it,[119] ‘not to lie, but not for that to speak out always the whole truth.’ Everyone who knew the Bishop and his hasty temper was astonished at his behaviour to the Jesuits. No one imagined he had forgotten the attitude the rector of the University of Cordova had assumed towards his consecration, and still the Bishop seemed to show more favour to the Jesuits in Asuncion than to the members of the other religious communities. Perhaps he felt the want of partisans amongst the educated classes, for his quarrel with the Governor had lost him many friends. Certainly in Asuncion it was of great importance that the Jesuits should not declare against him openly. He praised them fulsomely both in the pulpit and in conversation, went in procession to their church, and treated them in public with marked consideration. As a contemporaneous Jesuit has left a record, they were not his dupes, but still endeavoured to live up to the praises he dispensed to them. He went so far as in a letter to the King, Philip IV., to say that the Jesuits only in all Paraguay were really fitted to have the care of Indians, and he advised the King to transfer the Indians who were under other religious bodies, as well as those under the secular clergy, to the care and guidance of that Order. No doubt in this the Bishop was right, even if not sincere. One of the qualifications the Jesuits had for the care of Indians was that the Indians did not look on them as Spaniards.