By and by the Inquisition heard something of what was going on from its spies. What could be done? The King was too high even for the Holy Office to touch; yet so awful a sacrilege as this could not be allowed to go on. The Inquisitor-General was Friar Archbishop Sotomayor, Philip's own confessor, a creature of Olivares, and a man of indifferent character; but even he took the King to task severely and repeatedly for his crime. Subsequently, when Philip probably was tired of the intrigue, he desisted, and then, after interminable secret inquiries by the Holy Office, it was decided that Villanueva was guilty of sacrilege of the worst description, and must be arrested. The King, remorseful or panic-stricken, was for letting the matter take its course; but Olivares, trembling now for himself (in 1642), went to the {350} Inquisitor-General, Sotomayor, with two decrees signed by the King, one dismissing him and banishing him from Spain, the other giving him a pension of 12,000 ducats a year for life, on condition that he resigned the Inquisitor-Generalship and retired to Cordova. Sotomayor naturally accepted the latter alternative. At the same time strong measures were taken in Rome by Philip's agents to induce the Pope to demand the reference of the case to him. The Inquisition obeyed the Pope's command, and sent the whole of the papers in a casket to Rome by one of its own confidential officers. Olivares managed to delay his departure whilst one of the King's painters, perhaps Velazquez, made several sketches of the messenger's face, which sketches were sent off post haste to the King's officers in various parts of Italy, with orders to capture the original secretly wherever he appeared, and send him closely isolated to Naples, whilst his precious casket of papers was to be forwarded intact to Olivares. The unfortunate messenger, Paredes, landed at Genoa, where he was at once kidnapped and spirited off to the strong castle of Ovo at Naples, fated to be kept in close confinement for the rest of his life, fifteen years. The casket was conveyed with great secrecy to Olivares, who, with the King, reduced it and its unread contents to ashes in Philip's private room. The new Inquisitor-General was a Benedictine friar in the confidence of Queen Isabel, one Diego de Arce; and as no news came from Rome of the case, letters were written by him and the Council of the Inquisition to the Pope. The latter, primed by Philip's ambassador, still {351} kept silence; and as the minutes of the trial of course could not be found, and the wretched messenger had apparently vanished from the face of the earth, there were no proofs forthcoming against Villanueva, who remained under interdiction and in partial seclusion.