hand could
bestow, an unsullied and honourable name."

He protested that his reputation had so much suffered that he would
prefer to retire to some remote corner as a humble servant of the king,
and leave a post which had made him so odious to all. Above all, he
entreated his Majesty to look upon this whole affair "not only like a
king but like a gentleman."

Philip answered these complaints and reproaches benignantly, expressed
unbounded confidence in the duke, assured him that the calumnies of his
supposed enemies could produce no effect upon the royal mind, and coolly
professed to have entirely forgotten having received any such letter as
that of which his nephew complained. "At any rate I have mislaid it," he
said, "so that you see how much account it was with me."

As the king was in the habit of receiving such letters every week, not
only from the commander, since deceased, but from Ybarra and others, his
memory, to say the least, seemed to have grown remarkably feeble. But the
sequel will very soon show that he had kept the letters by him and
pondered them to much purpose. To expect frankness and sincerity from
him, however, even in his most intimate communications to his most
trusted servants, would have been to "swim with fins of lead."

Such being the private relations between the conspirators, it is
instructive to observe how they dealt with each other in the great game
they were playing for the first throne in Christendom. The military
events have been sufficiently sketched in the preceding pages, but the
meaning and motives of public affairs can be best understood by
occasional glances behind the scenes. It is well for those who would
maintain their faith in popular Governments to study the workings of the
secret, irresponsible, arbitrary system; for every Government, as every
individual, must be judged at last by those moral laws which no man born
of woman can evade.

During the first French expedition-in the course of which Farnese had
saved Paris from falling into, the hands of Henry, and had been doing his
best to convert it prospectively into the capital of his master's
empire--it was his duty, of course, to represent as accurately as
possible the true state of France. He submitted his actions to his
master's will, but he never withheld from him the advantage that he might
have derived, had he so chosen, from his nephew's luminous intelligence
and patient observation.

With the chief personage h