To give his fiction colour.
Fab. Sure, 'tis so.
Count. He, too, has forg'd this idle prophecy,
(To shake me with false terrors) this prediction,
Which, but to think of, us'd to freeze my veins;
"That no descendant from my father's loins,
Should live to see a grandson; nor Heaven's wrath
Cease to afflict us, till Alphonso's heir
Succeeded to his just inheritance."
Hence superstition mines my tottering state,