in presence of Don Eugenio and of one or two other persons.  He would then console him, in which task he would be assisted by Don Eugenio.  He would afterwards leave him with the religious person who would be appointed for that purpose.  That night and the whole of the following day, which would be a festival, till after midnight, would be allotted to Montigny, that he might have time to confess, to receive the sacraments, to convert himself to God, and to repent.  Between one and two o’clock in the morning the execution was to take place, in presence of the ecclesiastic, of Don Eugenio de Peralta, of the notary, and of one or two other persons, who would be needed by the executioner.  The ecclesiastic was to be a wise and prudent person, and to be informed how little confidence Montigny inspired in the article of faith.  If the prisoner should wish to make a will, it could not be permitted.  As all his property had been confiscated, he could dispose of nothing.  Should he, however, desire to make a memorial of the debts which he would wish paid; he was to be allowed that liberty.  It was, however, to be stipulated that he was to make no allusion, in any memorial or letter which he might write, to the execution which was about to take place.  He was to use the language of a man seriously ill, and who feels himself at the point of death.  By this infernal ingenuity it was proposed to make the victim an accomplice in the plot, and to place a false exculpation of his assassins in his dying lips.  The execution having been fulfilled, and the death having been announced with the dissimulation prescribed, the burial was to take place in the church of Saint Saviour, in Simancas.  A moderate degree of pomp, such as befitted a person of Montigny’s quality, was to be allowed, and a decent tomb erected.  A grand mass was also to be celebrated, with a respectable number, “say seven hundred,” of lesser masses.  As the servants of the defunct were few in number, continued the frugal King, they might be provided each with a suit of mourning.  Having thus personally arranged all the details of this secret work, from the reading of the sentence to the burial of the prisoner; having settled not only the mode of his departure from life, but of his passage through purgatory, the King despatched the agent on his mission.

The royal program was faithfully enacted.  Don Alonzo arrived at Valladolid; and made his arrangements with Don Eugenio.  It was agreed that a paper, prepared by royal authority, and brought by Don Alonzo from Madrid, should be thrown into the corridor of Montigny’s prison.  This paper, written in Latin, ran as follows: