Of the Count of Chinchon, who at one time was supposed to have court influence because a dabbler in architecture, much consulted during the building of the Escorial by Philip ii. until the auditing of his accounts brought him into temporary disgrace, and the Marquises of Velada, Villalonga, and other ministers, it is not necessary to speak.  There was one man in the council, however, who was of great importance, wielding a mighty authority in subordination to the duke.  This was Don Pietro de Franqueza.  An emancipated slave, as his name indicated, and subsequently the body-servant of Lerma, he had been created by that minister secretary of the privy council.  He possessed some of the virtues of the slave, such as docility and attachment to the hand that had fed and scourged him, and many vices of both slave and freedman.  He did much of the work which it would have been difficult for the duke to accomplish in person, received his fees, sold and dispensed his interviews, distributed his bribes.  In so doing, as might be supposed, he did not neglect his own interest.  It was a matter of notoriety, no man knowing it better than the king, that no business, foreign or domestic, could be conducted or even begun at court without large preliminary fees to the secretary of the council, his wife, and his children.  He had, in consequence, already accumulated an enormous fortune.  His annual income, when it was stated, excited amazement.  He was insolent and overbearing to all comers until his dues had been paid, when he became at once obliging, supple, and comparatively efficient.  Through him alone lay the path to the duke’s sanctuary.

The nominal sovereign, Philip iii., was thirty years of age.  A very little man, with pink cheeks, flaxen hair, and yellow beard, with a melancholy expression of eye, and protruding under lip and jaw, he was now comparatively alert and vigorous in constitution, although for the first seven years of his life it had been doubtful whether he would live from week to week.  He had been afflicted during that period with a chronic itch or leprosy, which had undermined his strength, but which had almost entirely disappeared as he advanced in life.

He was below mediocrity in mind, and had received scarcely any education.  He had been taught to utter a few phrases, more or less intelligible, in French, Italian, and Flemish, but was quite incapable of sustaining a conversation in either of those languages.  When a child, he had learned and subsequently forgotten the rudiments of the Latin grammar.

These acquirements, together with the catechism and the offices of the Church, made up his whole stock of erudition.  That he was devout as a monk of the middle ages, conforming daily and hourly to religious ceremonies, need scarcely be stated.  It was not probable that the son of Philip ii. would be a delinquent to church observances.  He was not deficient in courage, rode well, was fond of hunting,