LEGENDS OF THE CITY OF MEXICO
green candle and wearing the high bonnet, and would be burned at the burning-place of the Holy Office—it was in front of the church of San Diego, Señor, at the western end of what now is the Alameda—and so would have burned out of her her sins. And before that astonishment was ended, there came another and a greater: when it was told that the witch, before the very eyes of her jailers, had escaped from the prison of the Inquisition and was gone free! All sorts of stories flew about the city. One said, crossing himself, that her friend the devil had helped her to her freedom; another said that Inquisitors also were of flesh and blood, and that she had been freed by her own beauty. Men talked at random—because, neither then nor later, did anybody know what really had happened. But what really did happen, Señor, was this:
On a day, the chief Inquisitor went into the prison of the Mulata that he might reason her to repentance. And, being come into her prison—it was a long and lofty chamber that they had put her into, Señor, not one of the bad small cells—he stopped short in amazement: beholding before him, drawn with char-
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