On the fragrant spring morning following the discovery of the execrated Voltaire, the little Josè, tightly clutching his father's hand, threaded the narrow Sierpes and crossed the Prado de San Sebastian, once the _Quemador_, where the Holy Inquisition was wont to purge heresy from human souls with fire. The father shuddered, and his stern face grew dark, as he thought of the revolting scenes once enacted in that place in the name of Christ; and he inwardly voiced a prayer of gratitude that the Holy Office had ceased to exist. Yet he knew that, had he lived in that day, he would have handed his beloved son over to that awful institution without demurral, rather than see him develop those heretical views which were already rising from the soil of his fertile, inquisitive mind. The tinkling of a bell sounded down the street. Father and son quickly doffed their hats and knelt on the pavement, while a priest, mounted on a mule, rode swiftly past on his way to the bedside of a dying communicant, the flickering lights and jingling bell announcing the fact that he bore with him the Sacred Host. "Please God, you will do the same some day, my son," murmured the father. But the little Josè kept his eyes to the pavement, and would make no reply. Meanwhile, at a splendidly carved table in the library of his palatial residence, surrounded by every luxury that wealth and ecclesiastical influence could command, the Archbishop, pious shepherd of a restless flock, sat with clouded brow and heavy heart. The festive ceremonials of Easter were at hand, and the Church was again preparing to display her chief splendors. But on the preceding Easter disturbances had interrupted the processions of the Virgin; and already rumors had reached the ears of the Archbishop of further trouble to be incited during the approaching Holy Week by the growing body of skeptics and anticlericals. To what extent these liberals had assumed the proportions of a propaganda, and how active they would now show themselves, were questions causing the holy man deep concern. Heavy sighs escaped him as he voiced his fears to his sympathetic secretary and associate, Rafaél de Rincón, the gaunt, ascetic uncle of the little Josè. "Alas!" he murmured gloomily. "Since the day that our Isabella yielded to her heretic ministers and thrust aside the good Sister Patrocinio, Spain has been in a perilous state. After that unholy act the dethronement and exile of the Queen were inevitable." "True, Your Eminence," replied the secretary. "But is there no cause for hope in the elevation of her son, Alfonso, to the throne?" "He is but seventeen--and absent from Spain six years. He lacks the force of his talented mother. And there is no longer a Sister Patrocinio to command the royal ear." "Unfortunate, I admit, Your Eminence. She bore the _stigmata_, the very marks of our Saviour's wounds, imprinted on her flesh, and worked his miracles. But, in Alfonso--"