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the noise of his fall, had succeeded in restoring his suspended faculties, they could gather no explanation, either of his sudden illness, or of the long fit of profound melancholy and abstraction which ensued. As Philip slowly opened his eyes, he glanced anxiously and hurriedly around, as if seeking for some object, which he expected and yet dreaded to behold; but he saw only his customary domestic attendants, with whose faces he was intimately familiar. The rays of the morning sun were streaming through the window; and as their cheering light shone upon him, hope whispered that the horrors of the last hour were only a troubled dream. But no:-he could not apply this 'flattering unction to his soul;' for there lay the fatal weapon, which the Prior had left behind him, as if its functions on earth were performed; and it was a dreadful witness to the realities of the scene, wherein Philip had just participated. How Don Diego had entered, or how he departed, Philip knew not; nor did he discover the place of his retreat, until, scarce a year afterwards, the Cardinal Legate produced an instrument transmitted to him from Rome, purporting to be the will of the Conde de Orotava, who, it appeared, had recently died in Italy, where, under an assumed name, he had long exercised the authority and functions of General of the order of Dominicans.

Philip ordered the oratorio and suite of apartments connected with it to be abandoned and dismantled;

and in doing this, a passage was found within the wall leading from the great chapel to the back of the picture of Our Lady, in the oratorio; and although it was impossible to detect the mode of passing through the picture, it was evident such means of entering the room existed; and similar means, no doubt, existed, for entering the chapels of San Salvador, together, it may be, with secret control over its regular parochial clergy or inferior attendants. And the Holy Office had power, in this way, to penetrate church or prison, palace or private house at will, and thus to subject all ranks and classes alike to the inspection of its unseen agents. Don Diego had plainly perverted his official influence to serve his private aims. But yet, when Philip reflected that he himself had covered his private revenge with the ostensible inducements of public justice, and sought aid from the Holy Office to rid him of his own son, and thus to have that done indirectly, which he had not courage to dare directly,-how could he, in his conscience, complain of the Count of Orotava for treading in the same paths of vengeance?

Peace never again returned to the bosom of Philip. The stings of remorse were planted there, never to be plucked out but with life. And the reflection that, for so many years, his every moment had been watched over by a being, whose intellectual ener gies defied the powers of the monarchy, to whom all places seemed accessible at all times, who con

trolled his counsels and governed his actions, although unseen as well as unknown, and who in his most secret hours, could start upon him like an invisible spirit suddenly invested with corporeal form, to harrow and madden his soul-this reflection, and the consciousness that others might possess the same means of countermining his plans, were sufficient in themselves alone to embitter his whole life; and no man, who could have penetrated the thoughts of Philip, as he brooded over the past in the congenial gloom of the Escorial, would have envied him the throne of Spain.*

* Two or three traits in this tale are copied from the adventures of a Spanish officer mentioned in Quintana's Vida del Gran Capitan; and the mode of Doña Catalina's death from a play of Calderon's, cited at the head of the article.

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FERNAN GONZALEZ,

THE GREAT COUNT OF CASTILE.

Heroic ditties of the elder time,

Sung by the mountain Christians in the holds
Of the everlasting hills, whose snows yet bear
The print of Freedom's footstep,—and wild strains,
Within the dark serranos, teach the rocks

And the pine forests deeply to resound

The praise of later champions.

VOL. I.

16

MRS. HEMANS.

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