THE ALTAR DEL PERDON
the festivals of the court. His name, Señor, was Don Simon Peyrens; and the Viceroy his patron—in whose suite he had come from Spain expressly to beautify the Palace with his paintings—was Don Gastón de Peralta, Marqués de Falces: who was the third Viceroy of the Province, being the successor to the good Don Luis de Velasco when that most worthy gentleman ceased to be a Viceroy and became an angel in the year 1564.
Well, Señor, it happened some years later—in the time of Don Martín Enriquez de Almanza, the fourth Viceroy, with whom Peyrens remained in favor—that the Chapter of the Cathedral, desiring to make splendid the Altar del Perdon, offered in competition to all the painters of Mexico a prize for the most beautiful picture of Our Lady of Mercy: which picture was to be placed in the centre of that altar and to be the chief glory of it. And, thereupon, all the painters of Mexico, save only Peyrens, entered into that competition with a reverent and an eager joy. And then it was, Señor, that Peyrens made plain the wickedness that was in him by his irreverent blasphemies. At a banquet at the Palace a
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