d to an indefinite period,
until the friar had been six years in prison, within which interval the
woman died. In a popular commotion which occurred in Cuenca in
consequence of an invasion by the French, all prisoners were set at
liberty, and this execrable miscreant disappeared.

The _Agonizante_ of Madrid {81} (which is the third case) also murdered
the companion of his vices, on her own bed too, in which they had passed
the preceding night. The true motive of this murder could never be
satisfactorily ascertained. But the friar having been taken _in
flagrante_, the judges could not hesitate for a moment in passing
sentence of death upon him. All the Spanish clergy had recourse to
Ferdinand VII., and used their utmost influence to obtain a pardon, or at
least a commutation of the sentence; but the king was inflexible, and the
criminal died at the hands of the executioner, by the _garrote_, in the
Plazuela de la Cebada, in Madrid.

Under the same reign of Ferdinand VII., the Convent of the Basilios of
Madrid was the theatre of most scandalous and sanguinary atrocities,
which had their origin in the relaxed manners of the inhabitants of that
establishment. The friars were accustomed to introduce by night into the
cloisters women of ill fame, and this custom had grown into something
like a right or privilege, which the friars were resolved to maintain at
all hazards, as it was afterwards proved; for the abbot, who until then
had connived at these irregularities, wished all of a sudden to adopt a
system of the utmost rigour and discipline, and to reduce the friars to
the severe observances of their order. The convent was situated in the
most populous part of Madrid. One night in the year 1832, loud screams
were heard by the inhabitants of the opposite houses, and by people who
were passing in the streets. The civil authorities were called to the
spot, and informed of the circumstances. They demanded entrance at the
doors of the convent, but the friars refused to comply. Force became
necessary. The gates were broken open, and the officers rushed in. All,
however, that the public could ever learn of that nocturnal invasion was
simply that the head of the unfortunate abbot was found in one cell, and
his trunk in another. Ferdinand VII. did not on that occasion display
the same degree of indignation and severity as he had done towards the
Agonizante. He was at that moment in all the plenitude of his despotic
pow