I 



234 THREE YEARS IN THE PACIFIC. 



servants in their preparations for immediate departure. The 

 friends of Giron murmured, and remonstrated against his hav- 

 ing the hindrance of a wife in his flight. At last, upon their 

 solicitation, he consented to leave her. He bade her an affec- 

 tionate adieu, and she swooned away ! On her recovery, she 

 inquired for her husband, and ascending a height, looked after 

 him in every direction. He had gone. She dissembled her 

 grief, and, thinking more of his defence than of her own safety, 

 prevailed upon several of the captains to follow her husband. 

 She was left alone, poor, without even a change of dress, or a 

 servant, for all had been sent off when she determined to fol- 

 low her lord. 



Captain Ruibarba carried Dona Mencia to Cuzco, where she 

 was protected by her relation, the Oidor, Saravia. Thence, 

 with every attention to which her high rank entitled her, she 

 was conducted to her father's house in Lima. Giron was taken. 

 She heard the executioner proclaim before her father's door ; 

 "By his Majesty, and the magnificent Cavalier Don Pedro 

 Puertocarrero, Maestre de Campo, this doom is ordered to be 

 executed upon this man, as a traitor to the royal crown, and 

 as a disturber of the public peace. — His head to be stricken off, 

 and fixed on the scaffold of the city ; his houses to be razed, 

 and the ground sowed with salt, and a marble monument to be 

 erected thereon, to commemorate his crimes. " 



Upon hearing this proclamation, she turned to a crucifix and 

 said ; " Thy will be done ; receive the pang which pierces my 

 soul ; place it with those which afflicted thy holy body, and 

 grant that my husband died in thy grace, and that I may re- 

 main, henceforward, under thy protection ; I desire no other 

 husband; my whole life shall be dedicated to thy love !" She 

 bore with Christian fortitude the spectacle of the body of the 

 husband she so tenderly loved, dragged through the streets at 

 the tail of a horse ! 



After this. Dona Mencia, and her mother, Dona Leonor 

 Puertocarrero, dedicated themselves to penance, and the dis- 

 charge of charitable acts and religious services. With the aid 

 of the Augustin friars, they soon became the founders of the 

 convent of La Incarnacion. — "Wonderful," says Calancha, 



