The Emperor’s son smiled up at him.
“What did Philip pay you to mislead me?” he asked.
The Italian’s shallow cheek flushed faintly, and a little quiver, it might be of rage or fear, ran through his sensitive frame.
“The fever returns on you, señor,” he said coldly.
Again Don Juan dragged himself into a sitting posture.
“No,” he answered with a terrible air, “my mind is very clear. I see what I have been all my life. Philip’s plaything–no more. And I dreamt to be a King! He used me till I climbed too high and then cast me away. And you, señor, are to take my place. It was never meant that I should leave the Low Countries. It was never meant that I should return again a victor to Madrid–as servant and as brother I have served the King well, and in his own fashion he hath rewarded me.”
He put his hands before his face and a shudder went through his body, for in that moment he thought of all the glorious past that had ended so suddenly and so terribly.
“I suffer!” he moaned. “Jésu and Maria, I suffer!”
He fell prostrate, face downwards, on the tumbled couch, and the strengthening sunlight played with a mocking brilliance on the scattered strands of his fair hair.
The Prince of Parma lifted the curtain before the door and spoke to one of his servants who waited outside, then crossed and knelt beside his general.