At the same time he vented his hate on Meïr Alguades, the physician of the dead king. The queen-regent had no cause to injure this Jewish notable; only Paul could desire his ruin, because he was the mainstay of his opponents and the leader of those who held him up to contempt. With the object of procuring his downfall, a vindictive accusation was trumped up against him. While the queen-mother, with the infant king, was staying at Segovia, some priests charged a Jew of the town with having bought a consecrated host from the sacristan, in order to blaspheme it. They further stated that the holy wafer had worked such terrible wonders while in the possession of the Jew, that in fear and trembling he had delivered it up to the prior of a monastery. Whether this story was fabricated, or whether there was a grain of truth in a bushel of fiction, it is impossible to say; it sufficed, however, to attract the serious attention of the bishop, Velasquez de Tordesillas, who caused a number of Jews to be arrested as accomplices in the crime, among them Don Meïr Alguades. Criminal proceedings were formally commenced by order of the queen-regent, and Alguades and his fellow-prisoners were subjected to torture, and confessed their guilt. It is stated that in his agony Meïr Alguades made a confession of another kind--that the king, Henry III, had come by his death at his hands. Although everybody knew that the king had been ailing from his youth, Don Mëir--who must have been specially interrogated while under torture as to whether he had poisoned the king--was put to death in the most inhuman manner. He was torn limb from limb. The same fate befell the other prisoners. Still not satisfied, the bishop of Segovia accused some Jews of having bribed his cook to poison his food, and they also were put to death. At about this time one of the synagogues in Segovia was transformed into a church.