concluded his written petition by stating that he was still willing to accept Mancio as his patrono, if Mancio were able to be present at Valladolid.  Should this be impossible, the prisoner asked that Dr. Vadillo, Canon of Plasencia, and the Augustinian Fray Francisco Cueto should be assigned to him as patronos.  A working arrangement thus became possible, and the General Inquisitor at Madrid ordered that Mancio should be given due facilities.  These orders were received on December 13.[145] It appears that Mancio picked up the dropped threads of this business on December 23, and spent another day or two in reviewing the general situation.[146] Mancio’s cautious policy was doubtless sound; but to Luis de Leon, who maintained that the matters on which his patrono had to pronounce were as simple as could be, these tactics seemed mistaken, and on January 13, 1575, he begged the Court to press Mancio to give an opinion without delay.[147] On March 6 Luis de Leon once more complained of being unable to confer with his patrono; but now, rather late in the day, he came nearer to putting the blame on the right shoulders.  Hitherto he had been prone to ascribe all manner of evil motives to Mancio, whom he should have known better:  at last it vaguely dawned on him that the obstacles might come (as, in fact, they did come) from the tribunal which was trying him.[148] On March 15 Mancio wrote a letter to the judges, promising to attend at Valladolid unless absolutely prevented from doing so.[149] Four days later the General Inquisition wrote to the same judges, hinting that a decision might be given shortly.[150] The Valladolid Court was stirred into temporary activity.  A sitting was held on March 30; Mancio was present; a consultation took place between him and his client;[151] and henceforth we hear no more of difficulties in connexion with Luis de Leon’s patrono.  Nearly six months had been wasted owing to want of tact on the part of the Inquisitionary officials.

As the event proved, the prisoner’s protests in this matter were thoroughly justified.  It is easy to perceive this now.  We cannot be sure that we should have taken the same view had we been contemporary spectators.  If appearances were not actually against Luis de Leon, they combined to reveal him in his least attractive posture.  His comparative promptitude in accepting Mancio as patrono, his unwillingness to abide by his choice, his sudden hostility to Mancio, his final acceptance of Mancio, are all explicable variations.  Nevertheless they showed a disregard for superficial consistency which might easily be misinterpreted as caprice.  The bias of the court had been veering away from the prisoner for some time.  His series of actions with respect to Mancio lost him all judicial favour.  His judges considered him as an unreasonable man, a gifted sophist fertile in inventing objections in and out of season, a hair-splitter perpetually arguing for argument’s