only appeal to the King.  “Convinced,” she said, “that her husband was innocent of the charges brought against him, she threw herself, overwhelmed and consumed by tears and misery, at his Majesty’s feet.  She begged the King to remember the past services of Montigny, her own youth, and that she had enjoyed his company but four months.  By all these considerations, and by the passion of Jesus Christ, she adjured the monarch to pardon any faults which her husband might have committed.”  The reader can easily judge how much effect such a tender appeal was like to have upon the heart of Philip.  From that rock; thus feebly smitten, there flowed no fountain of mercy.  It was not more certain that Montigny’s answers to the interrogatories addressed to him had created a triumphant vindication of his course, than that such vindication would be utterly powerless to save his life.  The charges preferred against him were similar to those which had brought Egmont and Horn to the block, and it certainly created no ground of hope for him, that he could prove himself even more innocent of suspicious conduct than they had done.  On the 4th March, 1570, accordingly, the Duke of Alva pronounced sentence against him.  The sentence declared that his head should be cut off, and afterwards exposed to public view upon the head of a pike.  Upon the 18th March, 1570, the Duke addressed a requisitory letter to the alcaldes, corregidors, and other judges of Castile, empowering them to carry the sentence into execution.

On the arrival of this requisition there was a serious debate before the King in council.  It seemed to be the general opinion that there had been almost severity enough in the Netherlands for the present.  The spectacle of the public execution of another distinguished personage, it was thought, might now prove more irritating than salutary.  The King was of this opinion himself.  It certainly did not occur to him or to his advisers that this consideration should lead them to spare the life of an innocent man.  The doubts entertained as to the expediency of a fresh murder were not allowed to benefit the prisoner, who, besides being a loyal subject and a communicant of the ancient Church, was also clothed in the white robes of an envoy, claiming not only justice but hospitality, as the deputy of Philip’s sister, Margaret of Parma.  These considerations probably never occurred to the mind of His Majesty.  In view, however, of the peculiar circumstances of the case, it was unanimously agreed that there should be no more blood publicly shed.  Most of the councillors were in favor of slow poison.  Montigny’s meat and drink, they said, should be daily drugged, so that he might die by little and little.  Philip, however, terminated these disquisitions by deciding that the ends of justice would not thus be sufficiently answered.  The prisoner, he had resolved, should be regularly executed, but the deed should be secret, and it should be publicly announced that he had died of a fever.