“She was not there,” protested Mendoza, interrupting the King, for he hardly knew what he was doing.

“She was there, since she confesses to have been in the room.  I do not tolerate interruption when I am speaking.  She was there, and her evidence will be considered.  Even if you did not see her, how can you be sure that your daughter was not there?  Did you search the room?  Did you look behind the curtains?”

“I did not.”  The stern old man seemed to shrink bodily under the frightful humiliation to which he was subjected.

“Very well, then you cannot swear that she was not in the room.  But you did not see her there.  Then I am sorry to say that there can have been no extenuating circumstances.  You entered his Highness’s bedchamber, you did not even speak to him, you drew your sword and you killed him.  All this shows that you went there fully determined to commit the crime.  But with regard to its motive, this strange confession of your daughter’s makes that quite clear.  She had been extremely imprudent with Don John, you were aware of the fact, and you revenged yourself in the most brutal way.  Such vengeance never can produce any but the most fatal results.  You yourself must die, in the first place, a degrading and painful death on the scaffold, and you die leaving behind you a ruined girl, who must bury herself in a convent and never be seen by her worldly equals again.  And besides that, you have deprived your King of a beloved brother, and Spain of her most brilliant general.  Could anything be worse?”

“Yes.  There are worse things than that, your Majesty, and worse things have been done.  It would have been a thousand times worse if I had done the deed and cast the blame of it on a man so devoted to me that he would bear the guilt in my stead, and a hundred thousand times worse if I had then held up that man to the execration of mankind, and tortured him with every distortion of evidence which great falsehoods can put upon a little truth.  That would indeed have been far worse than anything I have done.  God may find forgiveness for murderers, but there is only hell for traitors, and the hell of hells is the place of men who betray their friends.”

“His mind is unsettled, I fear,” said the King, speaking to Perez.  “These are signs of madness.”

“Indeed I fear so, Sire,” answered the smooth Secretary, shaking his head solemnly.  “He does not know what he says.”

“I am not mad, and I know what I am saying, for I am a man under the hand of death.”  Mendoza’s eyes glared at the King savagely as he spoke, and then at Perez, but neither could look at him, for neither dared to meet his gaze.  “As for this confession my daughter has made, I do not believe in it.  But if she has said these things, you might have let me die without the bitterness of knowing them, since that was in your power.  And God knows that I have staked my life freely for your Majesty and for Spain these many years, and would