Into the story of Susan's daughter I
have woven that of another New-Christian girl, who, like the
Hermosa Fembra, her taken a Castilian lover--in this case a youth
of the house of Guzman. This youth was driven into concealment in
circumstances more or less as I describe them. He overheard the
judaizing of several New-Christians there assembled, and bore
word of it at once to Ojeda. The two episodes were separated in
fact by an interval of three years, and the first afforded Ojeda
a strong argument for the institution of the Holy Office in
Seville. Between the two there are many points of contact, and
each supplies what the other lacks to make an interesting
narrative having for background the introduction of the
Inquisition to Castile. The denouement I supply is entirely
fictitious, and the introduction of Torquemada is quite
arbitrary. Ojeda was the inquisitor who dealt with both cases.
But if there I stray into fiction, at least I claim to have
sketched a faithful portrait of the Grand Inquisitor as I know
him from fairly exhaustive researches into his life and times.
The story of the False Demetrius is here related from the point
of view of my adopted solution of what is generally regarded as a
historical mystery.
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