by command of Count Egmont, wrote to the Prince of Orange thus and so.  What evidence was this upon which to found a charge of high treason against a man whom Granvelle affected to characterize as otherwise neither opposed to the Catholic religion, nor to the true service of the King?  What vulpine kind of mercy was it on the part of the Cardinal, while making such deadly insinuations, to recommend the imprisoned victim to clemency?

The unfortunate envoys, Marquis Bergen and Baron Montigny, had remained in Spain under close observation.  Of those doomed victims who, in spite of friendly remonstrances and of ominous warnings, had thus ventured into the lion’s den, no retreating footmarks were ever to be seen.  Their fate, now that Alva had at last been despatched to the Netherlands, seemed to be sealed, and the Marquis Bergen, accepting the augury in its most evil sense, immediately afterwards had sickened unto death.  Whether it were the sickness of hope deferred, suddenly changing to despair, or whether it were a still more potent and unequivocal poison which came to the relief of the unfortunate nobleman, will perhaps never be ascertained with certainty.  The secrets of those terrible prison-houses of Spain, where even the eldest begotten son, and the wedded wife of the monarch, were soon afterwards believed to have been the victims of his dark revenge, can never perhaps be accurately known, until the grave gives up its dead, and the buried crimes of centuries are revealed.

It was very soon after the departure of Alva’s fleet from Carthagena, that the Marquis Bergen felt his end approaching.  He sent for the Prince of Eboli, with whom he had always maintained intimate relations, and whom he believed to be his disinterested friend.  Relying upon his faithful breast, and trusting to receive from his eyes alone the pious drops of sympathy which he required, the dying noble poured out his long and last complaint.  He charged him to tell the man whom he would no longer call his king, that he had ever been true and loyal, that the bitterness of having been constantly suspected, when he was conscious of entire fidelity, was a sharper sorrow than could be lightly believed, and that he hoped the time would come when his own truth and the artifices of his enemies would be brought to light.  He closed his parting message by predicting that after he had been long laid in the grave, the impeachments against his character would be, at last, although too late, retracted.

So spake the unhappy envoy, and his friend replied with words of consolation.  It is probable that he even ventured, in the King’s name, to grant him the liberty of returning to his home; the only remedy, as his physicians had repeatedly stated, which could possibly be applied to his disease.  But the devilish hypocrisy of Philip, and the abject perfidy of Eboli, at this juncture, almost surpass belief.  The Prince came to press the hand and to close the eyes of the dying man whom he called his friend, having