his capacity to govern them.  There is no doubt that he was a most uncomfortable personage at home, both to himself and to others, and that he hated his father’ very cordially.  He was extremely incensed at the nomination of Alva to the Netherlands, because he had hoped that either the King would go thither or entrust the mission to him, in either of which events he should be rid for a time of the paternal authority, or at least of the paternal presence.  It seems to be well ascertained that Carlos nourished towards his father a hatred which might lead to criminal attempts, but there is no proof that such attempts were ever made.  As to the fabulous amours of the Prince and the Queen, they had never any existence save in the imagination of poets, who have chosen to find a source of sentimental sorrow for the Infante in the arbitrary substitution of his father for himself in the marriage contract with the daughter of Henry the Second.  As Carlos was but twelve or thirteen years of age when thus deprived of a bride whom he had never seen, the foundation for a passionate regret was but slight.  It would hardly be a more absurd fantasy, had the poets chosen to represent Philip’s father, the Emperor Charles, repining in his dotage for the loss of “bloody Mary,” whom he had so handsomely ceded to his son.  Philip took a bad old woman to relieve his father; he took a fair young princess at his son’s expense; but similar changes in state marriages were such matters of course, that no emotions were likely to be created in consequence.  There is no proof whatever, nor any reason to surmise; that any love passages ever existed between Don Carlos and his step-mother.

As to the process and the death of the Prince, the mystery has not yet been removed, and the field is still open to conjecture.  It seems a thankless task to grope in the dark after the truth at a variety of sources; when the truth really exists in tangible shape if profane hands could be laid upon it.  The secret is buried in the bosom of the Vatican.  Philip wrote two letters on the subject to Pius V. The contents of the first (21st January, 1568) are known.  He informed the pontiff that he had been obliged to imprison his son, and promised that he would, in the conduct of the affair, omit nothing which could be expected of a father and of a just and prudent king.  The second letter, in which he narrated, or is supposed to have narrated, the whole course of the tragic proceedings, down to the death and burial of the Prince, has never yet been made public.  There are hopes that this secret missive, after three centuries of darkness, may soon see the light.—­[I am assured by Mr. Gachard that a copy of this important letter is confidently expected by the Commission Royale d’Histoire.]