Palomino relates several characteristic anecdotes of Cano. An Auditor of the Chancery of Granada bore especial devotion to St. Anthony of Padua, and wished for an image of that saint from the hands of Cano. When the figure was finished, the judge liked it much. He inquired what money the artist expected for it: the answer was, one hundred doubloons. The amateur was astonished, and asked, “How many days he might have spent upon it?” Cano replied, “Some five-and-twenty days.” “Well,” said the Auditor, “that comes to four doubloons per day.” “Your lordship reckons wrong,” said Cano, “for I have spent fifty years in learning to execute it in twenty-five days.” “That is all very well, but I have spent my patrimony and my youth in studying at the University, and in a higher profession; now here I am, Auditor in Granada, and if I get a doubloon a day, it is as much as I do.” Cano had scarce patience to hear him out. “A higher profession, indeed!” he exclaimed; “the king can make judges out of the dust of the earth, but it is reserved for God alone to make an Alonso Cano.” Saying this, he took up the figure and dashed it to pieces on the pavement; whereupon the Auditor escaped as fast as he could, not feeling sure that Cano’s fury would confine itself to the statue. CANO’S HATRED OF THE JEWS. Another characteristic of Cano, was his insuperable repugnance for any persons tainted with Judaism. It appears that in Granada the unhappy persons of that nation who were _penitenciados_ (i.e. who had been subjected to penance by the Inquisition) were in the habit of getting what they could to support themselves, by selling linen and other articles about the streets; they wore of course the _sambenito_, or habit prescribed by the Inquisition as the mark of their penance. If Cano met one of these men in the street, he would cross to the other side, or get out of his way into the passage of a house. Occasionally, however, in turning a corner, or by mere accident, one of these persons would sometimes brush the garment of the artist, who then instantly sent his servant home for another, whether cloak or doublet, and gave the _polluted_ one to his attendant. The servant, however, did not dare to wear what he had thus acquired, or his master would have turned him out of the house forthwith--he could only sell it. It is added that the manifest profit which the servant derived from his master’s scruples, made the people doubt whether in all cases the Jew had really brushed against the artist, or whether the servant had himself twitched the cloak as the Jew passed. At any rate the servant has been heard to remonstrate, and urge that “it was the slightest touch in the world, sir--it cannot matter.” “Not matter?--you scoundrel, in such things as these, everything matters;” and the valet got the cloak.