would
make himself sick with a surfeit of underdone pork.

Whatever may be said of the father, we can hardly go far wrong in
ascribing the instincts of a murderer to the son. He not only
burned heretics, but he burned them with an air of enjoyment and
self-complacency. His nuptials with Elizabeth of France were celebrated
by a vast auto-da-fe. He studied murder as a fine art, and was as
skilful in private assassinations as Cellini was in engraving on gems.
The secret execution of Montigny, never brought to light until the
present century, was a veritable chef d'oeuvre of this sort. The
cases of Escobedo and Antonio Perez may also be cited in point. Dark
suspicions hung around the premature death of Don John of Austria, his
too brilliant and popular half-brother. He planned the murder of William
the Silent, and rewarded the assassin with an annuity furnished by
the revenues of the victim's confiscated estates. He kept a staff of
ruffians constantly in service for the purpose of taking off Elizabeth,
Henry IV., Prince Maurice, Olden-Barneveldt, and St. Aldegonde. He
instructed Alva to execute sentence of death upon the whole population
of the Netherlands. He is partly responsible for the martyrdoms of
Ridley and Latimer, and the judicial murder of Cranmer. He first
conceived the idea of the wholesale massacre of St. Bartholomew,
many years before Catharine de' Medici carried it into operation. His
ingratitude was as dangerous as his revengeful fanaticism. Those who
had best served his interests were the least likely to escape the
consequences of his jealousy. He destroyed Egmont, who had won for him
the splendid victories of St. Quentin and Gravelines; and "with minute
and artistic treachery" he plotted "the disgrace and ruin" of Farnese,
"the man who was his near blood-relation, and who had served him most
faithfully from earliest youth." Contemporary opinion even held him
accountable for the obscure deaths of his wife Elizabeth and his son
Carlos; but M. Gachard has shown that this suspicion is unfounded.
Philip appears perhaps to better advantage in his domestic than in his
political relations. Yet he was addicted to vulgar and miscellaneous
incontinence; toward the close of his life he seriously contemplated
marrying his own daughter Isabella; and he ended by taking for his
fourth wife his niece, Anne of Austria, who became the mother of his
half-idiotic son and successor. We know of no royal family, unless it
may b