But, though she kept the King in alternate fits of maudlin devotion and despairing rage at her capricious flouting of all the rules and traditions of his Court, he himself was politically a cypher, and the policy always favoured by Mariana slowly but surely gained ground, whilst the French interest grew weaker; and Marie Louise, in spite of her uncle’s indignant reminders, raised no finger to help the cause she had been sent to Spain to champion. If Mariana ever had quarrelled with the Emperor, as Villars thought, the breach was patched up now, and the Austrian ambassador, Count de Grana, an old friend of Mariana’s, came to draw closer than before the family alliance. And yet Mariana ostentatiously abstained from any governmental action, whilst all went in the way she wished. The first open sign of a return to the old policy of religious unity and the Austrian connection was the holding of the greatest _auto de fe_ that had taken place in Madrid for half a century, in June 1680. The Plaza Mayor was transformed at a vast expense into a great theatre; all its hundreds of windows were filled with the aristocracy of Spain, and the high roofs of the houses crowded with people to see the dreadful show. All the inquisitors in Spain had been summoned, and the pulpit, the great tribune for the judges, the platform for the bishops, and the fronts of the barriers and balconies were covered with costly tapestries and rich hangings for the occasion. Eighty-five grandees and noblemen were proud to act as familiars of the Holy Office, and a picked corps of 250 gentlemen served as soldiers of the faith, to guard its ministers, and each to carry a faggot for the devilish bonfire at the gate of Fuencarral after the _auto_ was finished. All day long, from early morning till four in the afternoon, the King, with Marie Louise and Mariana, sat in the principal balcony of the Panadería, the centre house in the great square, whilst 120 poor wretches in sambenitos, with ropes round their necks, gags in their mouths, and other insignia of shame, were condemned after innumerable ceremonies, sermons and rogations, to the tender mercies of the law condemning heresy. Charles swore again on the gospels to defend and promote the Catholic faith as held in Spain; and when the dread sentences were pronounced, the captain of the Inquisition Guard entered the royal balcony, bearing upon his shield a faggot, which was presented to Charles and the Queen, the former of whom returned it to the holder, saying: ‘Take it in my name, and let it be the first cast upon the fire to burn heretics.’ The French ambassador and his wife were obliged to be present, for those who did not attend were looked upon with suspicion; but they, and all the world, knew that this atrocious scene meant the growing power of the traditional ideas connected with Austrian friendship and the certainty at no distant period of a renewal of the war with France.