iculous, in order to irritate Farnese; but
thus it was. There was so much stir, about these works of art that
Alexander transmitted copies of them to the king, whereupon Charles
Mansfeld, being somewhat alarmed, endeavoured to prove that they had been
entirely misunderstood. The venerable personage lying on the ground, he
explained, was not his father, but Socrates. He found it difficult
however to account for the appearance of La Motte, with his one arm
wanting and with artillery by his side, because, as Farnese justly
remarked, artillery had not been invented in the time of Socrates, nor
was it recorded that the sage had lost an arm.

Thus passed the autumn of 1592, and Alexander, having as he supposed
somewhat recruited his failing strength, prepared, according to his
master's orders for a new campaign in France. For with almost preterhuman
malice Philip was employing the man whom he had doomed to disgrace,
perhaps to death, and whom he kept under constant secret supervision, in
those laborious efforts to conquer without an army and to purchase a
kingdom with an empty purse, in which, as it was destined, the very last
sands of Parma's life were to run away.

Suffering from a badly healed wound, from water on the chest,
degeneration of the heart, and gout in the limbs, dropsical, enfeebled,
broken down into an old man before his time, Alexander still confronted
disease and death with as heroic a front as he had ever manifested in the
field to embattled Hollanders and Englishmen, or to the still more
formidable array of learned pedants and diplomatists in the hall of
negotiation. This wreck of a man was still fitter to lead armies and
guide councils than any soldier or statesman that Philip could call into
his service, yet the king's cruel hand was ready to stab the dying man in
the dark.

Nothing could surpass the spirit with which the soldier was ready to do
battle with his best friend, coming in the guise of an enemy. To the last
moment, lifted into the saddle, he attended personally as usual to the
details of his new campaign, and was dead before he would confess himself
mortal. On the 3rd of December, 1592, in the city of Arran, he fainted
after retiring at his usual hour to bed, and thus breathed his last.

According to the instructions in his last will, he was laid out barefoot
in the robe and cowl of a Capuchin monk. Subsequently his remains were
taken to Parma, and buried under the pavement of the little Fr