The contest was carried to the government for its decision, and the minister, Campomanes, a zealous defender of the sovereign’s rights, as well as a constant enemy to the usurpations of the clergy, confirmed the jurisdiction of the civil power which had heard the cause, and declared that the Spanish legislature offered no impediment to the execution of the last penalty of the law, if the judges found sufficient grounds to warrant them in awarding it. The judges did so find, and pronounced sentence accordingly; but the king, Charles III., commuted the sentence to perpetual banishment and imprisonment. The assassin was conducted to Puerto Rico, where he ended his life, weighed down by remorse, though his hours were consecrated to penitence and prayer. The history of the second case, viz., that of the Capuchine of Cuenca, bears a still more scandalous and atrocious character. The unhallowed passions of this great criminal had their origin also in the confessional. The accomplice of his wickedness was, too, his “daughter of confession,” (_hija de confesion_. {78}) She was the wife of a carpenter of respectable character, who, not content with the influence which the friar exercised over the conscience of his wife, wished that influence might also be brought to bear over the concerns of his own modest household, and therefore frequently invited the friar to his table. The latter and his _querida_, unknown to the confiding carpenter, passed some years in a total abandonment of themselves to vicious courses. The friar began, subsequently, to imagine he observed a certain coldness or indifference on the part of his companion in guilt, and, attributing that change to a feeling of the woman’s self-disgust and reproach, he had recourse to the most diabolical means of searing her conscience, and making her still more the associate of his depravity: indeed, it is not possible even to read without horror of the abominable artifices to which this monster of iniquity had recourse, although these were all minutely detailed in the written charges brought against him at his trial, and were deposed to by the woman herself, she being fully corroborated by the testimony of other witnesses secreted in a part of the house from whence his revolting conduct was both seen and heard. One step in the path of immorality and crime too often leads on to another. The friar at length imagined that the woman’s indifference arose from some latent spark of affection which she still bore to her husband, and he resolved on sacrificing the life of the unfortunate man whose connubial rights seemed to stand in his way. Full of impatience for the consummation of the diabolical project when once he had determined on its execution, and having given to his victim a strong soporific, which threw him into a heavy sleep, he proceeds to urge on the faithless wife to the act of stabbing her unconscious husband. This tragedy she performed with