see that there were no listeners, he informed me
that he had received intelligence from the Pope as to the demands made by
Don John upon his Holiness for bulls, briefs, and money to assist him in
his English scheme, and that eighty thousand ducats had already been sent
to him in consequence." Perez added that the nuncio was very anxious to
know how the affair should best be communicated to the King, without
prejudice to his Highness. He had given him the requisite advice, he
continued, and had himself subsequently told the King that, no doubt,
letters had been written by Don John to his Majesty, communicating these
negotiations at Rome, but that probably the despatches had been
forgotten. Thus, giving himself the appearance of having smoothed the
matter with the King, Perez concluded with a practical suggestion of much
importance--the necessity, namely, of procuring the assassination of the
Prince of Orange as soon as possible. "Let it never be absent from your
mind," said he, "that a good occasion must be found for finishing Orange,
since, besides the service which will thus be rendered to our master, and
to the states, it will be worth something to ourselves."

No apology is necessary for laying a somewhat extensive analysis of this
secret correspondence before the reader. If there be any value in the
examples of history, certainly few chronicles can furnish a more
instructive moral. Here are a despotic king and his confidential minister
laying their heads together in one cabinet; the viceroy of the most
important provinces of the realm, with his secretary, deeply conferring
in another, not as to the manner of advancing the great interests, moral
or material, of the people over whom God has permitted them to rule, but
as to the best means of arranging conspiracies against the throne and
life of a neighboring sovereign, with the connivance and subsidies of the
Pope. In this scheme, and in this only, the high conspirators are agreed.
In every other respect, mutual suspicion and profound deceit characterize
the scene. The Governor is filled with inexpressible loathing for the
whole nation of "drunkards and wineskins" who are at the very moment
strewing flowers in his path, and deafening his ears with shouts of
welcome; the king, while expressing unbounded confidence in the viceroy,
is doing his utmost, through the agency of the subtlest intriguer in the
world, to inveigle him into confessions of treasonable schemes, and th