in the name of the most Holy Inquisition, we arrest thee!"

"Aliaga!" muttered Calderon, falling back.

"Peace!" interrupted the Jesuit. "Officers, remove your prisoner."

"Poor old man," said Calderon, turning towards the cardinal, who stood
spell-bound and speechless, "thy life at least is safe. For me, I defy
fate! Lead on!"

The Prince of Spain soon recovered from the shock which the death of
Beatriz at first occasioned him. New pleasures chased away even remorse.
He appeared again in public a few days after the arrest of Calderon; and
he made strong intercession on behalf of his former favourite. But even
had the Inquisition desired to relax its grasp, or Uzeda to forego his
vengeance, so great was the exultation of the people at the fall of the
dreaded and obnoxious secretary, and so numerous the charges which party
malignity added to those which truth could lay at his door, that it
would have required a far bolder monarch than Philip the Third to have
braved the voice of a whole nation for the sake of a disgraced minister.
The prince himself was soon induced, by new favourites, to consider any
further interference on his part equally impolitic and vain; and the
Duke d'Uzeda and Don Gaspar de Guzman were minions quite as supple,
while they were companions infinitely more respectable.

One day, an officer, attending the levee of the prince, with whom he was
a special favourite, presented a memorial requesting the interest of
his highness for an appointment in the royal armies, that, he had just
learned by an express was vacant.

"And whose death comes so opportunely for thy rise, Don Alvar?" asked
the Infant.

"Don Martin Fonseca. He fell in the late skirmish, pierced by a hundred
wounds."

The prince started and turned hastily away. The officer lost all favour
from that hour, and never learned his offence.

Meanwhile months passed, and Calderon still languished in his dungeon.
At last the Inquisition opened against him its dark register of
accusations. First of these charges was that of sorcery, practised
on the king; the rest were for the most part equally grotesque and
extravagant. These accusations Calderon met with a dignity which
confounded his foes, and belied the popular belief in the elements of
his character. Submitted to the rack, he bore its tortures without a
groan; and all historians have accorded concurrent testimony to the
patience and heroism which characterised the close of his wild and