t that
letter of his to Philip made the task a difficult one. Philip showed it
to me.

"If that man," he said, "had uttered to my face what he has dared to
write, I do not think I should have been able to contain myself without
visible change of countenance. It is a sanguinary letter."

I set myself to calm him as best I could.

"The man is indiscreet, which has its advantage, for we always know
whither an indiscreet man is heading. His zeal for his master blinds him
and makes him rash. It is better, perhaps, than if he were secretive and
crafty."

With such arguments I appeased his wrath against the secretary. But I
knew that his hatred of Escovedo, his thirst for Escovedo's blood, dated
from that moment in which Escovedo had forgotten the reverence due to
majesty. I was glad when at last he took himself off to Flanders to
rejoin Don John. But that was very far from setting a term to his
pestering. The Flanders affair was going so badly that the hopes of an
English throne to follow were dwindling fast. Something else must
be devised against the worst, and now Don John and Escovedo began to
consider the acquisition of power in Spain itself. Their ambition aimed
at giving Don John the standing of an Infante. Both of them wrote to me
to advance this fresh project of theirs, to work for their recall,
so that they could ally themselves with my party--the Archbishop's
party--and ensure its continuing supreme. Escovedo wrote me a letter
that was little better than an attempt to bribe me. The King was ageing,
and the Prince was too young to relieve him of the heavy duties of
State. Don John should shoulder these, and in so doing Escovedo and
myself should be hoisted into greater power.

I carried all those letters to the King, and at his suggestion I even
pretended to lend an ear to these proposals that we might draw from
Escovedo a fuller betrayal of his real ultimate aims. It was dangerous,
and I enjoined the King to move carefully.

"Be discreet," I warned him, "for if my artifice were discovered, I
should not be of any further use to you at all. In my conscience I am
satisfied that in acting as I do I am performing no more than my duty. I
require no theology other than my own to understand that much."

"My theology," he answered me, "takes much the same view. You would have
failed in your duty to God and me had you failed to enlighten me on the
score of this deception. These things," he added in a dull voice, "appa