It was the very morning of the execution. The procession was already
on its way to the grand square. Not a moment was to be lost. The grand
inquisitor was a relation of Don Antonio, though they had never met.
His first impulse was to make himself known; to exert all his family
influence, the weight of his name, and the power of his eloquence, in
vindication of the alchymist. But the grand inquisitor was already
proceeding, in all his pomp, to the place where the fatal ceremony was
to be performed. How was he to be approached? Antonio threw himself
into the crowd, in a fever of anxiety, and was forcing his way to the
scene of horror, where he arrived just in time to rescue Inez, as has
been mentioned.
It was Don Ambrosio that fell in their contest. Being desperately
wounded, and thinking his end approaching, he had confessed to an
attending father of the inquisition, that he was the sole cause of the
alchymist's condemnation, and that the evidence on which it was
grounded was altogether false. The testimony of Don Antonio came in
corroboration of this avowal; and his relationship to the grand
inquisitor had, in all probability, its proper weight. Thus was the
poor alchymist snatched, in a manner, from the very flames; and so
great had been the sympathy awakened in his case, that for once a
populace rejoiced at being disappointed of an execution.
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