hed to the Netherlands, seemed to
be sealed, and the Marquis Bergen, accepting the augury in its most evil
sense, immediately afterwards had sickened unto death. Whether it were
the sickness of hope deferred, suddenly changing to despair, or whether
it were a still more potent and unequivocal poison which came to the
relief of the unfortunate nobleman, will perhaps never be ascertained
with certainty. The secrets of those terrible prison-houses of Spain,
where even the eldest begotten son, and the wedded wife of the monarch,
were soon afterwards believed to have been the victims of his dark
revenge, can never perhaps be accurately known, until the grave gives up
its dead, and the buried crimes of centuries are revealed.

It was very soon after the departure of Alva's fleet from Carthagena,
that the Marquis Bergen felt his end approaching. He sent for the Prince
of Eboli, with whom he had always maintained intimate relations, and whom
he believed to be his disinterested friend. Relying upon his faithful
breast, and trusting to receive from his eyes alone the pious drops of
sympathy which he required, the dying noble poured out his long and last
complaint. He charged him to tell the man whom he would no longer call
his king, that he had ever been true and loyal, that the bitterness of
having been constantly suspected, when he was conscious of entire
fidelity, was a sharper sorrow than could be lightly believed, and that
he hoped the time would come when his own truth and the artifices of his
enemies would be brought to light. He closed his parting message by
predicting that after he had been long laid in the grave, the
impeachments against his character would be, at last, although too late,
retracted.

So spake the unhappy envoy, and his friend replied with words of
consolation. It is probable that he even ventured, in the King's name, to
grant him the liberty of returning to his home; the only remedy, as his
physicians had repeatedly stated, which could possibly be applied to his
disease. But the devilish hypocrisy of Philip, and the abject perfidy of
Eboli, at this juncture, almost surpass belief. The Prince came to press
the hand and to close the eyes of the dying man whom he called his
friend, having first carefully studied a billet of most minute and secret
instructions from his master as to the deportment he was to observe upon
this solemn occasion and afterwards. This paper, written in Philip's own
hand, had been