haste to excuse herself.
She demanded protection from Vasquez and the evil rumours he was putting
abroad, implored the King to make an example of men who could push
so far their daring and irreverence, and to punish that Moorish dog
Vasquez--I dare say there was Moorish blood in the fellow's veins--as he
deserved.

I think our ruin dated from that letter. Philip sent for me to the
Escurial. He wished to know more precisely what the accusations were.
I told him, denying them. Then he desired of the Princess proof of what
she alleged against Vasquez, and she had no difficulty in satisfying
him. He seemed to believe our assurance that all was lies. Yet he did
not move to punish Vasquez. But then I knew that sluggishness was his
great characteristic. "Time and I are one," he would say when I pressed
on matters.

After that it was open war in the Council between me and Vasquez. The
climax came when I was at the Escurial. I had sent a servant to Vasquez
for certain State papers to be submitted to the King. He brought them,
and folded in them a fiercely denunciatory letter full of insults and
injuries, not the least of which was the imputation that my blood was
not clean, my caste not good.

In a passion I sought Philip, beside myself almost, trembling under the
insult.

"See, Sire, what this Moorish thief has dared to write me. It transcends
all bearing. Either you take satisfaction for me of these insults or you
permit me to take it for myself."

He appeared to share my indignation, promised to give me leave to
proceed against the man, but bade me first wait a while until certain
business in the competent hands of Vasquez should be transacted. But
weeks grew into months, and nothing was done. We were in April of '79,
a year after the murder, and I was grown so uneasy, so sensitive to
dangers about me, that I dared no longer visit Anne. And then Philip's
confessor, Frey Diego de Chaves, came to me one day with a request on
the King's part that I should make my peace with Vasquez.

"If he will retract," was my condition. And Chaves went to see my enemy.
What passed between them, what Vasquez may have told him, what he may
have added to those rumours of my relations with Anne, I do not know.
But I know that from that date there was a change in the King's attitude
towards me, a change in the tone of the letters that he sent me, and,
this continuing, I wrote to him at last releasing him from his promise
to afford me sati