The fine ruffled shirt he wore had been torn in his delirious struggles and showed his throat and the gaunt lines of his shoulders.
His face was colourless with the pure pallor of a blonde complexion, and his long, pale waving hair clung to his damp forehead and hung dishevelled either side of his hollow cheeks; his large grey eyes, whose usual expression was so joyous, careless and ardent, now shone with the brilliancy of fever and were sunk and shadowed beneath with the bluish tinge that stained his close-drawn lips.
His right hand, on which sparkled an emerald ring, clutched at the linen over his heart; the other was taut on the ground with the effort of supporting his body.
In the niche above him a solitary white pigeon sat contented and surveyed his invaded home.
Alessandro Farnese, tall and very slender, dark-haired, from head to foot in black save for a great chain of linked gold and jewels over his velvet doublet, let the improvised curtain fall into place over the doorway and stood leaning against the wall, never moving his sombre eyes from the Prince whose gleaming glance fiercely returned the scrutiny.
“Your Highness is a whole man to-day,” he said; his voice was smooth, low, carefully trained like his expression and his gestures; Philip’s favourites always had this quiet way.
“Whether I shall get well or no I cannot tell,” answered Don Juan hoarsely. “But this I know–that His Majesty hath forsaken me.”
The Prince of Parma took his right elbow in his left hand and put his right hand to his pointed chin.