questioned Juan. He would not tell them who got him the medicine until they tortured him almost to death. Putting on their masks three of them went into the courtroom and took their seats on the platform. Rodrigo was brought in and condemned to death. At a nod, the trap door on which he stood was sprung and his body plunged into a vat of burning oil.

Jose's information came from records kept by his family which traced its lineage to Juan Tell, one of the twelve founders of Lima. In line of descendants was Nicolas de Manzuelas, a beautiful young man who became the favorite of Prince Esquilache, the poet. Esquilache was but 32 when Phillip III named him viceroy of Peru, and Nicolas 28. Soon after his arrival in Lima he and Nicolas became as one. Nicolas also wrote poetry but his chief interest lay in the sons of Indian nobles and their education. As a result Esquilache founded a school for the youths and made Nicolas its director.

Jose smiled wisely and said as far as he knew Nicolas was the only man who ever defied the Jesuits and lived. He sedulously forbade the parish priest to read St. Paul's famous epistle to any of the students, but the padre, instead of raging and bringing down the wrath of the Tribunal on Nicolas' head, couldn't do enough for Nicolas. Nicolas was quite handsome and the holy man sometimes found it expedient to hear Nicolas' confession in the padre's bedroom.

I couldn't imagine Manzon in his costume conducting a business unless it was hair-styling, interior decorating or dressmaking. Jose explained that he had no need to, that he had oil holdings and belonged to the group of 20 Peruvians who practically controlled the nation's economy. Frequently

Manzon gave fabulous stag banquets in his mansion in the fashionable Miraflores suburbs, its decor of the elaborately ornate Spanish colonial period. Seated on a gem studded viceregal chair that throne-like stood on a red velvet draped platform, diamonds blazing in a wide purple satin band stretched diagonally across his pleated lace shirt-front, he received his guests while a string orchestra played. The music continued during the banquet, which was served by Indian youths dressed as their ancestors had been in the days of Pizzaro. Each guest had to have a workable. knowledge, of the manners and customs of that period as the conversation during the evening was never allowed to lapse into the 20th century. After the banquet naked Inca youths. danced and sang.

On the wall at the head of a gracefully curved pink marble stairway hangs a painting of Amador, Manzon's namesake, the Marquis de Rivevalle, His Excellency Senor Don Ama-dor Querrero de Resistra y Espinoza -the only male descendant of a prominent Sevillian family Pizzaro's conquest made tremendously rich.

Amador was seven when his parents died of plague and his grandmother and two very virginal aunts took him to Lima and surrounded him with luxuries and slaves. He was their little girl and they dressed him like one and he played only with the daughters of Lima's aristocracy. When older he attended a Jesuit school, then went to Oxford. There his swishiness and limp wrist gestures made him most unpopular. However, his wealth greased his way through and he returned to Lima. While in Oxford he fell madly in love with a pink-cheeked English poet named Creighton. After a year spent in Lima he rejoined him in Paris. There they plunged headlong into the Bohemian life but whenever any of the men discussed their sexual activities

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