“Forty-five years of my life, King Don Juan, have been passed in your service; nor have I ever heard a word of complaint from your lips. The favours you have showered on me were greater than my deserts, and certainly more than my desire. To my prosperity one thing was wanting—caution. In the days when you loved me I should have retired from court and enjoyed in an honourable retreat the well-earned proofs of your munificence.
“But I was either too generous or presumptuous, and I continued to lead the state as long as I deemed my sovereign needed me. In this, O King of Castile, I was myself deceived.”
So completely had Don Juan’s heart at this time been hardened against him, that, resolute for once, instead of a reply, the trial of the High Constable was decided on. The crimes of which he was accused were many. First, the assassination of the Conde de Vivars; then vague charges of embezzlement of the royal revenues, of having possessed himself by magic of the will of the king and of his late queen; of being a tyrant, without specifying any act of tyranny, and of usurping the royal authority, without stating on what occasion.
So irregular and illegal were the conditions of the tribunal, composed of accusers and judges, that it went far toward proving not only his innocence, but a preconceived conclusion against him. He was condemned to death.
Still he could not be brought to believe in his danger. When the sentence was read to him, he bowed his grand head, covered with the glossy curls, and was silent. A defiant smile parted his lips, as, roused from his usual apathy, his eyes travelled slowly round from one to the other of his judges.
Had not a fortune-teller predicted he should die in Cadahalso, the name of one of his fiefs? And he was now in prison in Valladolid! But he forgot that, in Spanish, Cadahalso also means scaffold, and that on the scaffold he was condemned to die.
He was condemned, but the warrant of death had not yet been signed by the king; at any time he might revoke it. The queen knew this and watched him.
The fatal paper lay on a table in his retiring-room, untouched. Long Don Juan contemplated it in silence, absorbed in more gloomy reflections than he had ever felt before.
He imagined he was alone, but the queen, who never left him, was concealed behind the arras.
Poor helpless, foolish sovereign! the atrocity of the act bewildered him. A confusion of ideas troubled his spirit. As he gazed, the letters stood out as if in characters of blood before his eyes.