From 1497 till 1808, when Napoleon put an end to the ‘holy court’ of the Inquisition, no declared Jews were to be found in the Spanish Peninsula. Plenty of secret Jews remained, who, under their name of Marannos, or New Christians, continued, generation after generation, to fill high offices in Church and State. The Marannos were true at heart, and by stealth, to Judaism, and not seldom at the tribunal of the Inquisition they had to pay the penalty of the suspicions which their deceit excited. The Marannos preferred, when they could, to marry among themselves, but there were, of necessity, frequent alliances, prompted by love or by ambition, between the highly placed New Christians and the grandest and most orthodox Catholic families of Spain. In course of time there were very few Catholic nobles who could not trace back to at least one Jew or Jewess amongst their ancestors. In the middle of last century, Joseph, King of Portugal, wishing to make a distinction between his subjects of pure, and those of mixed, descent, asked his minister Pombal if he could arrange for a peculiar hat to be recommended to the wear of New Christians. The next day Pombal brought his master three of such hats. ‘For whom are these?’ asked the king. ‘One is for your Majesty, one is for me, and one is for the Inquisitor-General,’ answered Pombal. The minister’s genealogical researches, we may suppose, rather disconcerted the king, but as they went to show that the new hats would have to be pretty generally worn, King Joseph gave up the idea of distinguishing the Jewish descended grandees of his kingdom. CHAPTER XXX. THE DARKNESS VISIBLE.