ry.

THE STORY OF ANTONIO PEREZ

As a love-story this is, I think, the saddest that ever was invented by
a romancer intent upon wringing tears from sympathetic hearts. How sad
it is you will realize when I tell you that daily I thank God on my
knees--for I still believe in God, despite what was alleged against me
by the inquisitors of Aragon--that she who inspired this love of which
I am to tell you is now in the peace of death. She died in exile at
Pastrana a year ago. Anne de Mendoza was what you call in France a great
parti. She came of one of the most illustrious families in Spain, and
she was a great heiress. So much all the world knew. What the world
forgot was that she was a woman, with a woman's heart and mind, a
woman's natural instincts to select her mate. There are fools who envy
the noble and the wealthy. They are little to be envied, those poor
pawns in the game of statecraft, moved hither and thither at the will
of players who are themselves no better. The human nature of them is a
negligible appendage to the names and rent-rolls that predetermine their
place upon the board of worldly ambition, a board befouled by blood, by
slobberings from the evil mouth of greed, and by infamy of every kind.

So, because Anne was a daughter of the House of Mendoza, because her
endowments were great, they plucked her from her convent at the age of
thirteen years, knowing little more of life than the merest babe, and
they flung her into the arms of Ruy Gomez, Prince of Eboli, who was
old enough to have been her father. But Eboli was a great man in Spain,
perhaps the greatest; he was, first Minister to Philip II, and between
his House and that of Mendoza an alliance was desired. To establish it
that tender child was sacrificed without ruth. She discovered that life
held nothing of all that her maiden dreamings had foreseen; that it was
a thing of horror and greed and lovelessness and worse. For there was
much worse to come.

Eboli brought his child-princess to Court. He wore her lightly as
a ribbon or a glove, the insignificant appendage to the wealth and
powerful alliance he had acquired with her. And at Court she came
under the eye of that pious satyr Philip. The Catholic King is very
devout--perfervidly devout. He prays, he fasts, he approaches the
sacraments, he does penance, all in proper season as prescribed by
Mother Church; he abominates sin and lack of faith--particularly in
others; he has drenched Flanders