y plans.

The Count of Fuentes, general superintendent of foreign affairs, was
especially charged with the department of assassination. This office was
no sinecure; for it involved much correspondence, and required great
personal attention to minute details. Philip, a consummate artist in this
branch of industry, had laid out a good deal of such work which he
thought could best be carried out in and from the Netherlands. Especially
it was desirable to take off, by poison or otherwise, Henry IV., Queen
Elizabeth, Maurice of Nassau, Olden-Barneveld, St. Aldegonde, and other
less conspicuous personages.

Henry's physician-in-chief, De la Riviere, was at that time mainly
occupied with devising antidotes to poison, which he well knew was
offered to his master on frequent occasions, and in the most insidious
ways. Andrada, the famous Portuguese poisoner, amongst others is said,
under direction of Fuentes and Ybarra, to have attempted his life by a
nosegay of roses impregnated with so subtle a powder that its smell alone
was relied upon to cause death, and De la Riviere was doing his best to
search for a famous Saxon drug, called fable-powder, as a counter-poison.
"The Turk alarms us, and well he may," said a diplomatic agent of Henry,
"but the Spaniard allows us not to think of the Turk. And what a strange
manner is this to exercise one's enmities and vengeance by having
recourse to such damnable artifices, after force and arms have not
succeeded, and to attack the person of princes by poisonings and
assassinations."

A most elaborate attempt upon the life of Queen Elizabeth early in this
year came near being successful. A certain Portuguese Jew, Dr. Lopez, had
for some time been her physician-in-ordinary. He had first been received
into her service on the recommendation of Don Antonio, the pretender, and
had the reputation of great learning and skill. With this man Count
Fuentes and Stephen Ybarra, chief of the financial department at
Brussels, had a secret understanding. Their chief agent was Emanuel
Andrada, who was also in close communication with Bernardino de Mendoza
and other leading personages of the Spanish court. Two years previously,
Philip, by the hands of Andrada, had sent a very valuable ring of rubies
and diamonds as a present to Lopez, and the doctor had bound himself to
do any service for the king of Spain that might be required of him.
Andrada accordingly wrote to Mendoza that he had gained over this emine