A young nobleman of the famous house of Guzman had engaged in an amorous intrigue with the daughter of a New-Christian. In the pursuit of this amour he repaired secretly to her father’s house on the night of Thursday in Holy Week of that year 1478, and was admitted by the girl. But the lovers being disturbed by voices in the house, Guzman was driven to conceal himself. From his concealment he overheard the conversation of several Judaizers who were being entertained by the father of his mistress. He heard them vehemently denying the divinity of Christ and as vehemently blaspheming His name and the Holy Faith. Having quitted the house, he went straight to the Prior of the Dominicans to relate what he had overheard and to denounce the blasphemers. This young Castilian is so very interesting a type that a slight digression to consider him more closely may be permitted. It is of assistance to understand the mental attitude, the crass complacency of the bigot. He knew that the highest virtue that a Christian could practise was the virtue of chastity, and, conversely, that the worst offence against God into which he could fall was that of unchastity. Or at least he had been taught these things, and he accepted them in a sub-conscious, automatic sort of way. Yet since the sin was his own, it gave his consciousness no uneasiness that he should perpetrate it, that he should slink like a thief into the house of this New-Christian to debauch his daughter. But let him hear this New-Christian or his friends express opinions of disbelief in this God whom he believed in and--by his own lights--insulted, and behold him outraged in all his feelings against those unspeakable fellows. Behold him running hot-foot to Prior Ojeda to relate with horror the tale of this vileness that he had overheard, so little concerned about the vileness through which he himself had acquired his knowledge that he makes no effort to conceal it. And, apparently, the Dominican, in a like horror at the New-Christians’ offence against a God in whom they do not believe, accounts of little moment the Castilian’s offence against the God in whom he does believe. It is a nice illumination of the contrast between the theory and the practice of Christianity. Upon the young man’s information Ojeda instituted an inquiry, and six Judaizers were arrested. They confessed their guilt, and begged to be reconciled to the Church. As the Inquisition had not yet been established, with its terrible decree against “relapsos,”[55] their prayer was granted, after the fulfilment of the penance imposed.[56] With the tale of this “execrable wickedness” Ojeda repaired at once to Cordova, whither the Sovereigns had by now withdrawn. The story would lose nothing in its repetition by this pious and saintly man, and he was in a position to add to it that the good folk of Seville were almost in revolt from indignation at that happening in their midst.