"Again she lifted her head, and her voice grew more resolute. `_Muchacha_, I have been here twenty-six years. All that time, in this chamber! They left me two of my children at the first. Then they took the Infant Don Fernando from me. And all my heart twined round my little maid,--my last-born, my Catalina! So they took her. I never knew why. I never did know wherefore they began at all, save for listening to some French friars that came to see me. And they told me very good things. God was good, they said, and loved me, and Jesus our Lord had taken away all my sins. And it was good to think so. So then _they_ beat me, and set me in the _cuerda_; and they called me an heretic, and a Lutheran, and all the bad words they knew. I do not think the holy angels at the gates of Paradise will turn me away, nor call me an heretic, because I thought Jesus had taken away my sins. If this be Lutheranism, then I am a Lutheran--then I will be a Lutheran for ever! And those were good friars, that came from Paris. They say the Observants are the ones I should believe. The Queen Dona Isabel set Observants about me. But the Observants beat me, and put me in the _cuerda_; and the Good Men [Note 2]--the French friars--said Jesus our Lord loved me, and had taken away all my sins. That was the better Evangel of the two. That thing in my head goes wrong when they give me the _cuerda_. But when I can sit quiet like this, and they will let me alone a little while, I love to think of Jesus our Lord, and of His taking away all my sins. I know not wherefore I should be beaten for that. It is my head, thou seest.' "Poor, poor lady! I felt great tears running down _my face_, and dropping on my gown as I knelt. `_Ay Senora mia_!' I said, so well as I could falter it, `Jesus, our dear Lord, hath taken away all our sins that do believe in Him. He loveth your Highness, and if you will cling to Him, He will have you to dwell with Himself at the end of this life.' "I felt I must use words easy to be received, for her understanding seemed gone, and like unto that of a little child. `_Ay doncella mia_!' she sighed, `I shall be glad when the end of this life is come.'