But what availed words? He addressed a being deaf to pity, incapable of being shaken by remonstrance or petition; and he was compelled to apply the lancet to the veins of the passive victim, as victim he could no longer doubt she was; and when the deed was done, he was again bandaged, and reconducted to his little shop in the Puerta del Sol. As the cavalier took leave, he filled the hand of Gil Cano with gold, and uttering the single word beware!-disappeared. El Valenciano dared not follow the retreating footsteps; but he indignantly flung the gold on the ground, disdaining to retain the wages of guilt, as if he were a bravo to kill for hire; and he had secured, in his own way, the means of detecting his employer; for as he left the mansion where the lady was bled, he touched the extremities of his spread fingers upon the outside of the door, and thus impressed upon it the stain of blood, resolving to seek out the house the next day by this infallible mark. He did so; and discovered, to his amazement and regret, the bloody sign upon the door of the Emperor's bosom friend and minister, the powerful Conde de Orotava.

Alarmed at his own boldness,-anxious,-afraid to speak, yet unable to retain the portentous secret which labored in his breast, El Valenciano repaired to the cell of his confessor, Fray Joaquin Arteaga, and unburthened his conscience in the ear of his ghostly adviser. Never was priest more horrorstruck by the developments of the confessional,

than Father Arteaga on this occasion; for he himself had been conducted during the past night to the same apartment, in the same secret and mysterious manner, and had administered the last rites of religion to the same lady on her death-bed; and he was now doomed to learn that it was a daughter dying by the commands of her father, and that father second in place or fame to none in the realm. He charged Gil Cano, by his hopes of salvation, not to breathe the fatal secret to any living being, with the assurance, that he himself would reveal it immediately to the Emperor in person. But it needed not that El Valenciano should be cautioned to silence; for the eye of an enemy was upon him; and he had not long returned to his ordinary avocations, when, as we have seen, his violent death forever sealed his lips.

It was not until the next morning that Father Arteaga could obtain access to the Emperor; and the tale, which he told, received terrible confirmation from the circumstance that a servitor of Don Diego Garcia's had just announced the sudden death of the Count's daughter, to account for his vacant place at the council-board. Philip was the only person present, when Fray Joaquin made his communication to the Emperor; and the priest proceeded directly from the palace to the church of San Salvador; but the knowledge that he possessed and had imparted Don Diego's secret, was already gained by one, who allowed no space between the

resolution and the execution of vengeance, and who struck him at the very feet of Our Lady. Wherefore he and Gil Cano had been slain with such ostentatious publicity, did not appear; nor why the name of Garci Perez had been so boastingly associated with the two assassinations, unless it were to divert the investigations of justice into a quarter where pursuit would be hopeless, and to direct the public indignation to an individual already steeped in crime and infamy. Nor did the inducements, which prompted the Emperor to suffer these deeds of blood to go unpunished, transpire. We may conjecture that Don Diego possessed some potent means of influencing his determination, unseen to the vulgar eye; or that a suspicion, perhaps a knowledge, of the foul part played by Don Philip in this dark tragedy, stayed the hand of the Emperor. Suffice it to say, that, on the morning when the proclamation relative to Garci Perez was made public, the Conde de Orotava left Madrid with the commission of ambassador of the Emperor at the court of Rome, the great focus of the intrigues and negociations which agitated Europe.

Years rolled on, and the tragic incidents here described had passed from the minds of men, or were only remembered by the careful chronicler or the curious antiquary, who, aloof from the stormy scenes of actual life as it rages around him, seeks occupation and instruction in tranquilly poring over the records of by-gone time. History in

forms us, that Maria of Portugal died, after bearing to Philip the Infante Carlos; and Philip was again married to Mary of England. At length, sick of empire, and sated with conquest and power, the Emperor renounced the imperial crown in favor of his brother Ferdinand, and that of Spain in favor of Philip, to shut himself up in the monastery of San Geronimo de Yuste, and there dedicate the remnant of his life to the service of God. Meanwhile the young Carlos grew up to manhood, possessed of every quality of head and heart fitted to render him a wise and beneficent prince, and manifesting indeed a liberality and elevation of feeling the reverse of that which characterized his father, whether in the public or private passages of life. Philip was again a widower; and, on the conclusion of the truce of Cateau-Cambresis in 1558, the hand of the princess Elizabeth of France, who had been destined for his son, and was of that son's own age, was bestowed on the King himself, to the destruction of the hopes of Don Carlos.

The subsequent circumstances, so far as they concern our present purpose, are enveloped in uncertainty. It is known that Don Carlos was committed by his father to the Inquisition for trial; that after several month's confinement he died in prison, either by violence or poison; and that the true circumstances of his death were carefully concealed at the time. Detached facts, appertaining to the point, are not wanting, and speculations upon it

occur in the books. It is averred by some, that Carlos was guilty, or suspected, of retaining or nourishing his passion for Elizabeth; in revenge of which the King caused his life to be taken. Others affirm that Carlos entered into treasonable relations with the leaders of the insurgents in the Netherlands, and having at the same time incurred the resentment of the Holy Office by his undisguised dislike of that institution, Philip was willing that he should be tried and dealt with by its officials, according to their discretion.There is yet another hypothesis, which, while it admits the imprisonment and the death, yet ascribes them both to alleged insanity of the Prince. However this may be, there is enough of mystery still hanging about the singular transaction, to render it a fit subject of romance, and more especially of dramatic invention. I resume the thread of my own tale at the period just prior to the termination of his life.

Don Carlos sat in his prison, given up to melancholy reflections on his singular destiny. His meditations were interrupted by the entrance of an ecclesiastic, the Prior of San Lorenzo, who, although seldom seen at court, yet had acquired distinguished reputation and high rank in the church, and had become slightly known to the Prince in Carlos felt surprised, yet relieved, and in some sort gratified, when he beheld the Prior. 'Welcome, good father,' said the Prince. I re14*

person.

VOL. I.