Jeromín quickly recovered from his fever, and the happy, peaceful, regular life flowed on at Villagarcia as before the disturbing interlude of Yuste and Cuacos. Luis Quijada faithfully kept the Emperor's secret, according to Philip's commands, and the very existence of Jeromín, once more shut up behind the walls of Villagarcia, seemed completely forgotten.

But there is no accounting for the memory of an inquisitive woman, however discreet and prudent she may be, and if few outdid the Governess of Spain, Princess Juana, in virtue, prudence and discretion, few had more curiosity, or better means of gratifying it at their command.

As no one had found out from Luis Quijada who Jeromín really was, it occurred to her that she might obtain the information from Do?a Magdalena, and with this object in view she sent a missive to Villagarcia about the 15th of May, begging her to come to see the Auto and to bring the boy she had with her, in the disguise in which he lived.

The Auto to which the Princess Juana alluded was the celebrated Auto da Fe which took place in Valladolid on the 21st of May, 1559, at which Dr. Augustin Cazalla and thirty of his heretic disciples were condemned. This Lutheran conspiracy had been discovered many months before during the lifetime of the Emperor, who had urged and begged Do?a Juana and the Inspector-General D. Fernando de Valdés, Archbishop of Seville, to mete out prompt and severe punishment to the offenders.

There lived then in Valladolid, at No. 13 of the Street of the Silversmiths, a certain Juan García, a silversmith by trade. For some time his wife had noticed that he was absent-minded and irritable, and that he pretended to go to bed early and then went out again. Being a brave, decided woman, she disguised herself one night and followed him, supposing some intrigue. When Juan García reached the street now called after Dr. Cazalla, he at once knocked at the door of a house between what are now cavalry barracks and the old apothecary's shop in the Square of St. Michel. The door was opened with great caution, and the woman distinctly heard a password which seemed to be "Chinela," and Juan García answered "Cazalla," on which the door opened and he went in. The wife remained spellbound, and her astonishment grew as she noticed that, singly and by twos, men and women came from both ends of the street. The same ceremony took place, and they disappeared into the mysterious house, which was none other than that of Do?a Leonora de Vibero, mother of Dr. Cazalla. Being, as we have said, a resolute woman, on seeing a very devout woman (the Juana Sánchez who afterwards committed suicide in the prison of the Inquisition by cutting her throat with scissors) approaching, she followed secretly, gave the password, and entered behind Sánchez into a large, ill-lighted room, where she saw and heard Dr. Cazalla explain to more than seventy people the doctrines of the Lutherans which he had brought back from Germany. She understood at once that she was in a conventicle of heretics, and horrified, but not losing her presence of mind, she left quietly and the same morning informed her confessor of all that she had seen and heard. Whether he was infected with the same doctrines or did not much believe the woman, he only told her not to worry over the matter. However, the same day she warned the Grand Inquisitor himself, and put the threads of the plot into his hands. Following them with much prudence and precaution, he found the plot so widespread that when in prison Cazalla rightly said, "If they had waited four months to persecute us, we should have been as numerous as they are, if six months, we should have done for them as they have for us." The affair made a great stir throughout Spain, and it is calculated that 200,000 people flocked to Valladolid to be present at the Auto da Fe, which was to take place as the crowning act of the drama on Trinity Sunday, the 21st May, 1559.

Luis Quijada was party to all this, as he had been sent by the Emperor from Yuste to the Princess and the Inquisitor to urge the swift and severe punishment of the heretics. As a man of his time, a fervent Spanish Catholic and a politician educated in Germany, Quijada thought that only severe warnings would stop Protestantism from entering Spain, and with it the breaking up of the kingdom and probably the end of the monarchy. So it appeared to him a good lesson for Jeromín to go to the Auto da Fe, and he insisted that Do?a Magdalena should accept the invitation of the Princess and go to Valladolid with the child and his niece, Do?a Mariana de Ulloa, heiress of his brother, ............