stationary, the communications were cut off through which his money and supplies reached him.  “Thus I remain,” said he, “perplexed and confused, desiring, more than life, some decision on your Majesty’s part, for which I have implored so many times.”  He urged the King most vehemently to send him instructions as to the course to be pursued, adding that it wounded him to the soul to find them so long delayed.  He begged to be informed whether he was to attack the enemy in Burgundy, whether he should await where he then was the succor of his Majesty, or whether he was to fight, and if so with which of his enemies:  in fine, what he was to do; because, losing or winning, he meant to conform to his Majesty’s will.  He felt deeply pained, he said, at being disgraced and abandoned by the King, having served him, both as a brother, and a man, with love and faith and heartiness.  “Our lives,” said he, “are at stake upon this game, and all we wish is to lose them honorably.”  He begged the King to send a special envoy to France, with remonstrances on the subject of Alencon, and another to the Pope to ask for the Duke’s excommunication.  He protested that he would give his blood rather than occasion so much annoyance to the King, but that he felt it his duty to tell the naked truth.  The pest was ravaging his little army.  Twelve hundred were now in hospital, besides those nursed in private houses, and he had no means or money to remedy the evil.  Moreover, the enemy, seeing that they were not opposed in the open field, had cut off the passage into Liege by the Meuse, and had advanced to Nivelles and Chimay for the sake of communications with France, by the same river.

Ten days after these pathetic passages had been written, the writer was dead.  Since the assassination of Escovedo, a consuming melancholy had settled upon his spirits, and a burning fever came, in the month of September, to destroy his physical strength.  The house where he lay was a hovel, the only chamber of which had been long used as a pigeon-house.  This wretched garret was cleansed, as well as it could be of its filth, and hung with tapestry emblazoned with armorial bearings.  In that dovecot the hero of Lepanto was destined to expire.  During the last few, days of his illness, he was delirious.  Tossing upon his uneasy couch, he again arranged in imagination, the combinations of great battles, again shouted his orders to rushing squadrons, and listened with brightening eye to the trumpet of victory.  Reason returned, however, before the hour of death, and permitted him, the opportunity to make the dispositions rendered necessary by his condition.  He appointed his nephew, Alexander of Parma, who had been watching assiduously over his deathbed, to succeed him, provisionally, in the command of the army and in his other dignities, received the last sacraments with composure, and tranquilly breathed his last upon the first day of October, the month which, since the battle of Lepanto, he had always considered a festive and a fortunate one.