ou entered his Highness's bedchamber, you
did not even speak to him, you drew your sword and you killed him. All
this shows that you went there fully determined to commit the crime. But
with regard to its motive, this strange confession of your daughter's
makes that quite clear. She had been extremely imprudent with Don John,
you were aware of the fact, and you revenged yourself in the most brutal
way. Such vengeance never can produce any but the most fatal results.
You yourself must die, in the first place, a degrading and painful death
on the scaffold, and you die leaving behind you a ruined girl, who must
bury herself in a convent and never be seen by her worldly equals again.
And besides that, you have deprived your King of a beloved brother, and
Spain of her most brilliant general. Could anything be worse?"

"Yes. There are worse things than that, your Majesty, and worse things
have been done. It would have been a thousand times worse if I had done
the deed and cast the blame of it on a man so devoted to me that he
would bear the guilt in my stead, and a hundred thousand times worse if
I had then held up that man to the execration of mankind, and tortured
him with every distortion of evidence which great falsehoods can put
upon a little truth. That would indeed have been far worse than anything
I have done. God may find forgiveness for murderers, but there is only
hell for traitors, and the hell of hells is the place of men who betray
their friends."

"His mind is unsettled, I fear," said the King, speaking to Perez.
"These are signs of madness."

"Indeed I fear so, Sire," answered the smooth Secretary, shaking his
head solemnly. "He does not know what he says."

"I am not mad, and I know what I am saying, for I am a man under the
hand of death." Mendoza's eyes glared at the King savagely as he spoke,
and then at Perez, but neither could look at him, for neither dared to
meet his gaze. "As for this confession my daughter has made, I do not
believe in it. But if she has said these things, you might have let me
die without the bitterness of knowing them, since that was in your
power. And God knows that I have staked my life freely for your Majesty
and for Spain these many years, and would again if I had it to lose
instead of having thrown it away. And God knows, too, that for what I
have done, be it good or bad, I will bear whatsoever your Majesty shall
choose to say to me alone in the way of reproach. But as I am