He crossed the nave on his way to the staircase leading to the choir. But as he reached the pulpit on the left he halted and knelt to offer up the prescribed prayer in adoration of the Sanctissimum Sacramentum. He set the lantern down upon the ground beside him, and leant his club against a pillar. Now was the assassins’ opportunity. He was at their mercy. And although to strike now was to leave half their task undone, they must have resolved that rather than postpone the matter again in the hope of slaying both inquisitors, they had better take the one that was delivered up to them. The chanting overhead muffled the sound of their steps as they crept up behind Arbués, out of the blackness into the faint wheel of yellow light cast by his lantern. Esperandeu was the first to strike, and he struck clumsily, doing no more than wound the inquisitor in the left arm. But swift upon that blow followed another from Uranso--a blow so violent that it smashed part of the steel cap, and, presumably glancing off, opened a wound in the inquisitor’s neck, which is believed to have been the real cause of his death. It did not, however, at that moment incapacitate him. He staggered up, and turned to the staircase that led to the choir. But now Esperandeu returned to the assault, and drove at the Dominican so furiously with his sword that, despite the shirt of mail with which Arbués was protected, the blade went through him from side to side. The inquisitor fell, and lay still. The organ ceased abruptly, and the assassins fled. There was confusion now in the choir. Down the stairs came the friars with their lanterns, to discover the unconscious and bleeding inquisitor. They took him up and carried him to bed. He died forty-eight hours later at midnight on Saturday, September 17, 1485.[128] By morning all the town had heard of the deed, and the effect which it produced was very different from that for which its perpetrators had hoped. The Old-Christians, some moved by religious zeal, some by a sense of justice, snatched up weapons and went forth to the cry of “To the fire with the _conversos_!” The populace--an uncertain quantity, ever ready to be swayed by the first voice that is loud enough, to follow the first leader who points the way--took up the cry, and soon Zaragoza was in turmoil. Through every street rang the clamours of the multitude, which threatened to offer up one of those hecatombs in which fire disputes with steel the horrid laurel of the day. The uproar penetrated to the Palace of Alfonso of Aragon, the seventeen-year-old Archbishop of Zaragoza. It roused that bastard of Catholic Ferdinand from his slumbers. A high-spirited lad, he summoned the grandees of the city and the officers of justice, and rode out at their head to meet and quell the rioters. But only by a promise that the fullest justice should be done upon the murderers did he succeed in dispersing them and restoring order to that distracted city.