most confidential Secretary of State at that period.  That the Governor was plotting no treason is sufficiently obvious from the context of his letters:  At the same time, with the expansiveness of his character, when he was dealing with one whom he deemed has close and trusty friend, he occasionally made use of expressions which might be made to seem equivocal.  This was still more the case with poor Escovedo.  Devoted to his master, and depending most implicitly upon the honor of Perez, he indulged in language which might be tortured into a still more suspicious shape when the devilish arts of Perez and the universal distrust of Philip were tending steadily to that end.  For Perez—­on the whole, the boldest, deepest, and most unscrupulous villain in that pit of duplicity, the Spanish court—­was engaged at that moment with Philip, in a plot to draw from Don John and Escovedo, by means of this correspondence, the proofs of a treason which the King and minister both desired to find.  The letters from Spain were written with this view—­those from Flanders were interpreted to that end.  Every confidential letter received by Perez was immediately laid by him before the King, every letter which the artful demon wrote was filled with hints as to the danger of the King’s learning the existence of the correspondence, and with promises of profound secrecy upon his own part, and was then immediately placed in Philip’s hands, to receive his comments and criticisms, before being copied and despatched to the Netherlands.  The minister was playing a bold, murderous, and treacherous game, and played it in a masterly manner.  Escovedo was lured to his destruction, Don John was made to fret his heart away, and Philip—­more deceived than all—­was betrayed in what he considered his affections, and made the mere tool of a man as false as himself and infinitely more accomplished.

Almost immediately after the arrival of Don John in the Netherlands; he had begun to express the greatest impatience for Escovedo, who had not been able to accompany his master upon his journey, but without whose assistance the Governor could accomplish none of his undertakings.  “Being a man, not an angel, I cannot do all which I have to do,” said he to Perez, “without a single person in whom I can confide.”  He protested that he could do no more than he was then doing.  He went to bed at twelve and rose at seven, without having an hour in the day in which to take his food regularly; in consequence of all which he had already had three fevers.  He was plunged into a world of distrust.  Every man suspected him, and he had himself no confidence in a single individual throughout that whole Babylon of disgusts.  He observed to Perez that he was at liberty to show his letters to the King, or to read them in the Council, as he meant always to speak the truth in whatever he should write.  He was sure that Perez would do all for the best; and there is something touching in these expressions of an honest