When Jeromín returned, overcome, to Cuacos, he found Doña Magdalena in the oratory, saying the prayers for the dying, again and again, with her ladies and servants. He knelt in a corner amongst them, and there remained for hours and hours. At ten o'clock sleep, that invincible friend of children, overcame him, and obliged Doña Magdalena to put him, dressed as he was, in her own bed, promising to wake him at the supreme moment. The lady sat at the head of the bed leaning against it, inside the curtains, telling her beads. Jeromín slept uneasily, with a sad expression on his little white face, heaving deep sighs. Doña Magdalena looked at him, anxious also and astonished. All at once, for the first time a strong suspicion crossed her mind; she stopped praying, looking earnestly at the child, and leant over him as if to kiss his forehead, and then kissed his little hands. At this moment the big bell of Yuste tolled solemnly in the silent night. Doña Magdalena sat up frightened and stretched out her neck to listen, with her hands joined. Another bell tolled and then another. There was no doubt, it was the passing bell. Doña Magdalena hesitated for a moment, and then gently woke the sleeping child. Clinging to her neck he asked, terrified, "Is he dead?" "Pray, my son, pray," she answered. And, linked together, they prayed the psalm of the dead, "Out of the deep I call." CHAPTER XII The grief of Luis Quijada at the death of the Cæsar was so great that the anonymous monk of Yuste, who was an eyewitness of all these events, writes as follows: "It happened that the Archbishop having left with the other lords, as I have said above, to write to the King, our Lord, about the death of his father, there remained in the room where the body of the dead Emperor lay, the three men beloved by H.M., the Marqués de Miraval, Luis Quijada and Martin Gastelbú (Gazletu), who did and said such things in their sorrow for the death of H.M. that those who did not know them might have judged them wrongly. They shouted, they cried, they beat their hands and their heads against the walls, they seemed beside themselves, and so they were, at seeing their lord die, who had brought them to such honours, and whom they so tenderly loved; they said much in praise of Cæsar, referring to his virtues. Such were their cries and shouts that they woke all the household of H.M., and all behaved in the same manner, till they were turned out of the room where four monks remained, who embalmed the body, as I said above." This excess of sorrow no doubt produced a certain nervous irritation in Luis Quijada, and made him harder and more severe than ever for a long while, and perhaps also less prudent. Only as regards Jeromín he seemed just the contrary, not by his care and vigilance, for they could not have been greater than before, but by showing the affection and regard which he had kept hidden.