in reply: "I find that you answered very well. Continue to
be prudent. They will tell you a thousand things, not for the sake
of telling them, but in the hope of drawing something out of you.
The bitter draughts you mention are inevitable. But use all the
dissimulation and address of which you are capable."

We corresponded daily after that, and I told him of every step I took;
how I kept my men about me, for fear that if they attempted to leave
Madrid they would be arrested, and how, finally, I contrived their
departure one by one, under conditions that placed them beyond all
suspicion. Juan de Mesa set out for Aragon on a mission concerned with
the administration of some property of the Princess of Eboli's. Rubio,
Insausti, and Enriquez were each given an ensign's commission, bearing
the King's own signature, and ordered to join the armies in various
parts of Italy; the first was sent to Milan, the second to Sicily, and
the last to Naples. Bosque went back to Aragon. Thus all were placed
beyond the reach of the active justice of Castile, all save myself--and
the King, who wrote to me expressing his satisfaction that there had
been no arrests.

But rumour continued to give tongue, and the burden of its tale was that
the murder had been my work, in complicity with the Princess of Eboli.
How they came to drag her name into the affair I do not know. It may
have been pure malice trading upon its knowledge of the relations
between us. She may have lent colour to the charge by her own
precipitancy in denying it. She announced indignantly that she was
being accused, almost before this had come to pass, and as indignantly
protested against the accusation, and threatened those who dared to
voice it.

The end of it all was that, a month later, the Escovedo family drew up
a memorial for the consideration of the King, in which they laid the
murder to my charge, and Philip consented to receive Don Pedro de
Escovedo--the dead man's son--and promised him that he would consider
the memorial, and that he would deliver up to justice whomsoever he
thought right. He was embarrassed by these demands of the Escovedos, my
own danger, his duty as king, and his interests as an accomplice, or,
rather, as the originator of the deed.

The Escovedos were powerfully seconded by Vasquez, the Secretary of the
Council, a member of Alva's party, a secret enemy of my own, consumed
by jealousy of my power, and no longer fearing to disclose himself a