This book opens a window on a forgotten and glorious time---the life of colonial Mexico. Here is the color of that era in a mosaic of life--a worldly ambitious archbishop, a beautiful nun-poetess, a Creole scholar torn between faith and scientific learning, poetasters, inquisitors--and in the background, the first glimmers of Mexican nationalism. Baroque in its intricate pattern of caste and custom, rich with silver pouring from its mines, the feudal society of Old Mexico lives in this account of a vanished time.