In the reception room there was also another ancestral portrait--that of the Inquisitor Don Jaime Febrer, whose name he bore. In the garrets of the house he had found several visiting cards yellowed by time, bearing the name of the rich priest; cards engraved with emblems such as came into use in the Eighteenth Century. In the center of the card appeared a wooden cross, with a sword and an olive branch; on both sides two pasteboard coronets worn as a mark of infamy by those on whom punishment was to be inflicted, one with the cross of the Sacred Office, another with dragons and Medusa heads. Manacles, whips, rosaries, and candles completed the decoration. Below burned a bonfire around a post with a large iron ring, and there figured a conical hat decorated with serpents, toads, and horned heads. A sort of sarcophagus rose between these decorations, and on it was inscribed in ancient Spanish lettering: "The Senior Inquisitor, Don Jaime Febrer." The peaceful Majorcan who, on returning to his house, found this visiting card, must have felt his hair rise in terror.
Another of his ancestors came into his mind, the one mentioned by the choleric Pablo Valls when he recalled the burning of the Chuetas and Father Garau's little book. He was an elegant and gallant Febrer, who had kindled enthusiasm among the ladies of Palma at the famous auto de fe, with his new suit of Florentine cloth, embroidered in gold, mounted upon a charger as sightly as his master, carrying the standard of the Sacred Tribunal. In flights of lyric rapture the Jesuit described his genteel bearing. At sundown the knight had seen, there near the foot of the castle of Bellver, how the corpulent bulk of Rafael Valls had burned, and how his entrails had burst out and fallen into the coals, a spectacle from which the presence of ladies distracted his attention, making his horse caracole near the doors of their carriages. Captain Valls was right; it was barbarous; but the Febrers were his kindred; his name and the fortune he had squandered he had owed to them. Now he, the last descendant of a family proud of its history, was about to marry Catalina Valls, the offspring of the executed Jew!
The old wives' tales he had heard in childhood, the simple stories with which Mammy Antonia used to entertain him, now surged through his mind like dreams of the past, which had made a deep impression. He thought of the Chuetas, who, according to popular opinion, were not the same as other people; reputed to be creatures of sordid poverty and slimy to the touch, who, no doubt, concealed terrible deformities. Who could say that Catalina was like other women?