Sometimes, too, the Queen would go with similar precautions, and it is to be feared, from the stories of eye-witnesses, that her tastes were, at all events in these joyful early years of her life, not too refined. Not only was she an ardent lover of the bull-fight, but she would in the palace or public theatres countenance amusements which would now be considered coarse. Quarrels and fights between country wenches would be incited for her to witness unsuspected; nocturnal tumults would be provoked for her amusement in the gardens of Aranjuez or other palaces; and it is related that, when she was in one of the grated _aposentos_ of a public theatre, snakes or noxious reptiles would be secretly let loose upon the floor or in the _cazuela_, to the confusion and alarm of the spectators, whilst the gay red-cheeked young {150} Queen would almost laugh herself into fits to see the stampede. [Sidenote: An _auto-de-fé_] Nor were bull-fights, comedies, equestrian shows and church spectacles the only amusements of a Court which actually lived for idle pleasures. There was another in which poignancy of excitement and devotion of the peculiar Spanish sort were equally blended; and, though not so frequent as the other diversions, was still more popular. These were the _autos-de-fe_. Heretics of the Protestant kind there were now practically none to burn; but sorcery, impiety, and above all Judaism, or the suspicion of it, provided enough victims to furnish forth an occasional public holiday. The description of one such ceremonial at this period will suffice.[20] It was not long after the mad French pedlar had outraged the religious proprieties in the Church of St. Philip, when the branch of the Inquisition at Madrid received advice from one of its ubiquitous familiars that certain persons, believed to be of Jewish origin, were in the habit of meeting at the house of a certain Licentiate in the Calle de las Infantas, where, amongst other impious rites, they flogged and maltreated a wooden crucifix. Before many hours had passed, the whole of the accused and their friends were in the dungeons of the Inquisition; and, as a warning to other backsliders, it was determined to hold a solemn public ceremonial judgment of the offenders in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid on Sunday, 4th July 1624.