The next step was to procure a decision of the Pope in favour of the _Immaculate Conception_. To promote this important object two commissioners were dispatched to Rome, both of them dignified clergymen, who had devoted their lives and fortunes to the cause of the Virgin Mary. After four years of indescribable anxiety the long wished-for decree, which doomed to silence the opponents of Mary’s original innocence, was known to be on the point of passing the _seal of the Fisherman_,[60] and the _Sevillians_ held themselves in readiness to express their unbounded joy the very moment of its arrival in their town. This great event took place on the 22d of October 1617, at ten o’clock P.M. “The news, says Zuñiga, produced a universal stir in the town. Men left their houses to congratulate one another in the streets. The fraternity of the _Nazarenes_ joining in a procession of more than six hundred persons, with lighted candles in their hands, sallied forth from their church, singing the hymn in honour of _Original Purity_. Numerous bonfires were lighted, the streets were illuminated from the windows and terraces, and ingenious fireworks were let off in different parts of the town. At midnight the bells of the cathedral broke out into a general chime, which was answered by every parish church and convent; and many persons in masks and fancy dresses having gathered before the archbishop’s palace, his grace appeared at the balcony, moved to tears by the devout joy of his flock. At the first peal of the bells all the churches were thrown open, and the hymns and praises offered up in them lent to the stillness of night the most lively sounds of the day.” [60] _Sigillum_ or _annulus Piscatoris_, the great seal of the Popes. A day was subsequently fixed when all the authorities were to take a solemn oath in the Cathedral, to believe and assert the _Immaculate Conception_. An endless series of processions followed to thank Heaven for the late triumph against the unbelievers. In fact, the people of Seville could not move about, for some time, without forming a religious procession. “Any boy,” says a contemporary historian, “who, going upon an errand, chose to strike up the hymn _Todo el Mundo_, were sure to draw after him a train, which from one grew up into a multitude; for there was not a gentleman, clergyman, or friar, who did not join and follow the chorus which he thus happened to meet in the streets.”