Martinez Moreno’s narrative is a queer jumble of possible fact and obvious fiction, which in itself may be responsible for the opinion that the whole story was an invention of Torquemada’s to forward his own designs. But in 1887 the distinguished and painstaking M. Fidel Fita published in the “Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia” the full record, which he had unearthed, of the proceedings against Yucé (or José) Franco, one of the incriminated Jews. A good deal still remains unexplained, and must so remain until the records of the trials of the other accused are brought to light. It may perhaps be well to suspend a final judgment until then. Meanwhile, however, a survey of the discovered record should incline us to the opinion that, if the story is an invention, it is one for which those who were accused of the crime are responsible--an unlikely contingency, as we shall hope to show--and in no case can the inventor have been Frey Tomás de Torquemada. CHAPTER XIX THE LEGEND OF THE SANTO NIÑO The extravagant story related by Martinez Moreno, the parish priest of La Guardia, in his little book on the Santo Niño, is derived, as we have said, partly from the “Testimonio” and partly from the “Memoria” by de Vegas; further, it embodies all those legendary, supernatural details with which the popular imagination had embellished the theme. Either it is one of those deliberate frauds known as “pious,” or else it is the production of an intensely foolish mind. When we consider that the author was a doctor of divinity and an inquisitor himself, we prefer to incline to the former alternative. This mixture of fact and fiction sets forth how a party of Jews from the townships of Quintana, Tenbleque, and La Guardia, having witnessed an Auto de Fé in Toledo, were so filled with rage and fury, not only against the Holy Tribunal, but against all Christians in general, that they conspired together to encompass a complete annihilation of the Faithful. Amongst them was one Benito Garcia, a wool-comber of Las Mesuras, who was something of a traveller, and who had learnt upon his travels of a piece of sorcery attempted in France for the destruction of the Christians, which had miscarried owing to a deception practised upon the sorcerers. The story is worth repeating for the sake of the light it throws upon the credulity of the simple folk of Spain in such matters, a credulity which in remote districts of the peninsula is almost as vigorous to-day as it was in Moreno’s century.