y wife to him
to intercede for me. But he refused to see her, and so I was left to
continue the victim of his vindictive lethargy. After a year of this,
upon my giving a formal promise to renounce all hostility towards
Vasquez, and never seek to do him harm in any way, I was accorded some
degree of liberty. I was allowed to go out and to receive visitors, but
not to visit any one myself.

Followed a further pause. Vasquez was now a man of power, for my party
had fallen with me, and his own had supplanted it in the royal councils.
It was by his work that at last, in '84, I was brought to trial upon a
charge of corruption and misappropriation. I knew that my enemies had,
meanwhile, become possessed of Enriquez, and that he was ready to give
evidence, that he was making no secret of his share in the death of
Escovedo, and that the King was being pressed by the Escovedos to bring
me to trial upon the charge of murder. Instead, the other charge alone
was preferred.

It was urged against me that I had kept a greater state than any grandee
of Spain, that when I went abroad I did so with a retinue befitting
a prince, that I had sold my favour and accepted bribes from foreign
princes to guard their interests with the King of Spain.

They sentenced me to two years' imprisonment in a fortress, to be
followed by ten years of exile, and I was to make, within nine days,
restitution of some twenty million maravedis*--the alleged extent of
my misappropriations--besides some jewels and furniture which I had
received from the Princess of Eboli, and which I was now ordered to
deliver up to the heirs of the late Prince.

*Ten thousand pounds, but with at least five times the
present purchasing power of that sum.

Perquisitions had been made in my house, and my papers ransacked. Well
I knew what they had sought. For the thought of the letters that had
passed between Philip and myself at the time of Escovedo's death must
now be troubling his peace of mind. I had taken due precautions when
first I had seen the gathering clouds foreshadowing this change of
weather. I had bestowed those papers safely in two iron-bound chests
which had been concealed away against the time when I might need them
to save my neck. And because now he failed to find what he
sought--the evidence of his own share in the deed and his present base
duplicity--Philip dared not slip the leash from those dogs who would
be at my throat for the murder