It was spoken at length; the majority alike of the
nobles and of the Santa Hermandad, believed and pronounced him guilty,
and sentence of death was accordingly passed; but the Duke of Murcia
then stepped forward, and urged the following, not only in the name of
his brother peers, but in the name of his native sovereign, Isabella;
that in consideration of the complicated and contradictory evidence,
of the prisoner's previous high character, and of his strongly
protested innocence, a respite of one month should be granted between
sentence and execution, to permit prayers to be offered up throughout
Spain for the discovery of the real murderer, or at least allow time
for some proof of innocence to appear; during which time the prisoner
should be removed from the hateful dungeon he had till that morning
occupied, and confined under strict ward, in one of the turrets of the
castle; and that, if at the end of the granted month affairs remained
as they were then, that no proof of innocence appeared, a scaffold was
to be erected in the Calle Soledad, on the exact spot where the murder
was committed; there the prisoner, publicly degraded from the honors
and privileges of chivalry, his sword broken before him, his spurs
ignominiously struck from his heels, would then receive the award
of the law, death from hanging, the usual fate of the vilest and
commonest malefactors.
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