ed.
He had raised an armed band, consisting of some Aragonese gentlemen
and their servants, and with this he fell like a thunderbolt upon the
Castilian men-at-arms and the familiars of the Inquisition. The alguazil
fled, leaving me one leg free, the other burdened by the gyve, and as
he fled so fled all others, being thus taken unawares. The Inquisitors
scuttled to the nearest shelter; the Viceroy threw himself into his
house and barricaded the door. There was no one to guide, no one to
direct. The soldiery in these circumstances, and accounting themselves
overpowered, offered no resistance. They, too, fled before the fusillade
and the hail of shot that descended on them.

Before I realized what had happened, the iron had been struck from my
leg, I was mounted on a horse, and, with Gil at my side, I was galloping
out of Saragossa by the gate of Santa Engracia, and breasting the slopes
with little cause to fear pursuit just yet, such was the disorder we had
left behind.

And there, very briefly, you have the story of my sufferings and my
escapes. Not entirely to be baulked, numerous arrests were made by the
Inquisitors in Saragossa when order was at last restored. There followed
an auto-da-fe, the most horrible and vindictive of all those horrors, in
which many suffered for having displayed the weakness of charity towards
a persecuted man. And, since my body was no longer in their clutches,
they none the less sentenced me to death as contumaciously absent, and
my effigy was burnt in the holy fires they lighted, amongst the human
candles which they offered up for the greater honour and glory of a
merciful God. Let me say no more, lest I blaspheme in earnest.

After months of wandering and hiding, Gil and I made our way here into
Navarre, where we remain the guests of Protestant King Henri IV, who
does not love King Philip any better since he has heard my story.

Still King Philip's vengeance does not sleep. Twice has he sent after me
his assassins--since assassination is the only weapon now remaining to
him. But his poor tools have each time been taken, exposed to Philip's
greater infamy and shame--and hanged as they deserve who can so vilely
serve so vile a master. It has even been sought to bribe my faithful
Gil de Mesa into turning his hand against me, and that attempt, too, has
been given the fullest publication. Meanwhile, my death to-day could
no longer avail Philip very much. My memorial is published throughout