Our two divines, fearful of being swept away with the guilty, were, at this time, perfectly outrageous in their zeal to bring the bakers’ wives at Alcalá to a due sense of the evil influence of their glaring, bushy top-knots and short petticoats. Having, therefore, with little ceremony to the vicar, taken possession of the parish church, they began a course of preaching for nine days, known by the name of _Novena_, a definite number which, with many other superstitions, has been applied to religious rites among the Catholics since the times of Roman paganism. Most of the Spanish villages possess some miraculous image--generally of the Virgin Mary--which is the _palladium_ of the inhabitants. These tutelar deities are of a very rude and ancient workmanship, as it seems to have been the case with their heathen prototypes. The “Great Diana” of the _Alcalaians_ is a small, ugly, wooden figure, nearly black with age, and the smoke of the lamp which burns incessantly before it, dressed up in a tunic and mantle of silver or gold tissue, and bearing a silver crown. It is distinguished from the innumerable host of wooden virgins by the title of _Virgen del Aguila_--“the Virgin of the Eagle,” and is worshipped on a high romantic spot, where stood a high fortress of the Moors, of which large ruins are still visible. A church was erected, probably soon after the conquest of Andalusia, on the area of the citadel. A spring-well of the most delicious water is seen within the precincts of the temple, to which the natives resort for relief in all sorts of distempers. The extreme purity of both air and water, on that elevated spot, may indeed greatly contribute to the recovery of invalids, for which the Virgin gets all the credit.