However much Quixada may have reposed on his wife's discretion, he did not think proper to try it, in the present instance, by communicating to her the secret of Geronimo's birth. He spoke of him as the son of a great man, his dear friend, expressing his desire that his wife would receive him as her own child. This was the less difficult, as Magdalena had no children of her own. The solicitude shown by her lord may possibly have suggested to her the idea that the boy was more nearly related to him than he chose to acknowledge,--in short, that he was the offspring of some intrigue of Quixada previous to his marriage.[129] But an event which took place not long after the child's introduction into the family, is said to have awakened in her suspicions of an origin more in accordance with the truth. The house at Villagarcia took fire; and, as it was in the night, the flames gained such head that they were not discovered till they burst through the windows. The noise in the street roused the sleeping inmates; and Quixada, thinking first of his charge, sprang from his bed, and, rushing into Geronimo's apartment, snatched up the affrighted child, and bore him in his arms to a place of safety. He then reentered the house, and, forcing his way through the smoke and flames, succeeded in extricating his wife from her perilous situation. This sacrifice of love to loyalty is panegyrized by a Castilian chronicler as "a rare achievement, far transcending any act of heroism of which antiquity could boast."[130] Whether Magdalena looked with the same complacency on the proceeding we are not informed. Certain it is, however, that the interest shown by her husband in the child had no power to excite any feeling of jealousy in her bosom. On the contrary, it seemed rather to strengthen her own interest in the boy, whose uncommon beauty and affectionate disposition soon called forth all the tenderness of her nature. She took him to her heart, and treated him with all the fondness of a mother,--a feeling warmly reciprocated by the object of it, who, to the day of his death, regarded her with the truest feelings of filial love and reverence.