But the devil, Señor, sometimes saves his own. On a morning, the jailer went as usual to Don Gil's cell with the bread and the water for him; and when he had opened the cell door he saw, as he believed, Don Gil in his armor waiting as usual for his bread and his water: but in a moment he perceived that what he saw was not Don Gil in his armor, but only the accursed armor standing upright full of emptiness; and that the staple was torn out; and that the great chain was broken; and that Don Gil was gone! And then--so much to the horror of the jailer that he immediately went mad of it--the empty armor began slowly to walk up and down the cell!
After that time Don Gil never was seen, nor was he heard of, again on earth; and so on earth, when the time came for burning him at the auto de fé, he had to be burned in effigy. However--as there could be no doubt about the place to which the devil had taken him--everybody was well satisfied that he got his proper personal burning elsewhere.
Then it was, Señor, that the Holy Office most wisely ordered that that devil-possessed and doubly accursed armor should be melted, and refounded into a cross: knowing that the sanctity of that blessed emblem would quiet the curses and would hold the devils still and fast. Therefore that order was executed; and the wisdom of it--which some had questioned, on the ground that devils and curses were unsuitable material to make a cross of--was apparent as soon as the bronze turned fluid in the furnace: because there came from the fiery seething midst of it--to the dazed terror of the workmen--shouts of devil-laughter, and imprecations horrible to listen to, and frightful blasphemies; and to these succeeded, as the metal was being poured into the mould, a wild outburst of defiant remonstrance; and then all this demoniac fury died away--as the metal hardened and became fixed as a cross--at first into half-choked cries of agony, and then into confused lamentations, and at the last into little whimpering moans. Thus the devils and the curses were disposed of: and then the cross--holding them imprisoned in its holy substance--was set up in a little townlet not far from Madrid in which just then a cross happened to be wanted; and there it remained usefully for some hundreds of years.