Time wore its slow course along, without any important incident occurring in this matter, until the reputation of the new Virey, Ravillagigedo, reached Atlizco.
Shortly thereafter there appeared at the vice-royal palace in the city of Mexico an old man, who related in a private audience the story of his griefs and of his misfortunes, and insisted that, in striking "the Lord's priest," he had no intention of committing an act of impiety, but that the feelings of a father had overcome him in an unguarded moment, and induced him to avenge an attempt made to dishonor his daughter.
The story of the old man touched the Virey, who had a manly heart wrapped up in a forbidding exterior.
But it was a delicate undertaking even for a vice-king to attempt to wrest a rich estate out of the clutches of the "Holy Office" without himself being suspected of heresy, or of disloyalty to the Church.
Yet Ravillagigedo was never at a loss for expedients when justice was to be done or the oppressed relieved.
The best advice, however, that he could give the old man was to hide himself again, and to send his daughters to Mexico to accuse the monk.
Upon a set day, the vice-king was found arrayed in state, surrounded by a council of Inquisitors, before whom the daughters, in the deepest mourning, presented themselves as the accusers of the profligate monk. They stated, with an artless simplicity which could not fail to convince, the story of the wrongs the monk had done them. The Inquisitors, sitting in the presence of the incorruptible Virey, could not, for very shame, do otherwise than declare unanimously that the monk, and not the old man, was worthy of the censure of the Church.
"Then let us wipe away the stain that rests upon the fair fame of these ladies as daughters of one dying suspected, by decreeing their father's