The Bishop, not to be outdone, also prepared a statement, in which he accused his adversary of all the crimes that he could think of, and confirmed his statement with an oath. The chapter, thinking things were in an impossible condition, besought that the fine laid on the excommunicated folk should be raised or lessened, as it appeared to them there was not money in the town to satisfy it. Cardenas refused, and thus four months elapsed. Soon after this arrived one Father Truxillo, of the Order of St. Francis, who came from Tucuman as Vice-Provincial. Cardenas, thinking, as they were both Franciscans, that Truxillo must needs be favourable to his cause, made him his Vicar-General, with power to bind and to unloose—that is, to free the excommunicated folk from all their disabilities if, on examination, it seemed good to him. Truxillo, who was quite unbiassed as to matters in Asuncion, looked into everything, and declared the Governor and everybody ought to be absolved. He further gave it as his opinion that, the affair having gone to the high court at Charcas, he could do nothing but give an interim decree. Don Bernardino heard the news at Itati, an Indian village a few miles outside Asuncion. From thence he went to a somewhat larger village called Yaguaron, and shut himself up in a convent, after declaring everyone (except the superior clergy) under the severest censure of the Church if they should dare approach. Not a bad place for prayer and meditation is Yaguaron. A score or two of little houses, built of straw and wood and thatched with palm-leaves, straggle on the hillside above the shores of a great camalote-covered[124] lake. Parrots scream noisily amongst the trees, and red macaws hover like hawks over the little patches of maize and mandioca planted amongst the palms. Round every house is set a grove of orange-trees, mingled with lemons, sweet limes, and guayabas. Inside the houses all is so clean that you could eat from any floor with less repulsion than from the plates at a first-class hotel. A place where life slips on as listless and luxuriant as the growth of a banana, and where at evening time, when the women of the place go to fetch water in a long line with earthen jars balanced upon their heads, the golden age seems less improbable even than in Theocritus. To Yaguaron the higher clergy flocked to intercede for the good people of Asuncion, all except Father Truxillo, who, knowing something of his Bishop, did not go. That he was wise, events proved shortly. Two canons—Diego Ponce de Leon and Fernando Sanchez—he imprisoned in their rooms, calling them traitors to their Bishop and their Church. Deputations came from the capital to beg for their release, but all in vain. The Bishop answered them that he had set his mind to purge his diocese of traitors; and the two canons remained in prison. After a detention which lasted forty days, they escaped and fled to Corrientes, which must have looked upon Asuncion as a vast madhouse.