their guilt and on their danger. The appeals to conscience and to fear
were of unequal force. The guilt of their conduct was not likely to
excite, in a couple abandoned to the indulgence of a mutual and violent
passion, any emotion except anger against the honesty and audacity which
rebuked them. By a grave discourse on breaches of decorum and morality,
Escovedo ran the risk of being considered--what the princess actually
declared him to be--a rude fellow and a _bore_. But the danger of their
profligacy was a more delicate and ominous text for censure. In the
peril of any public exposure was involved an additional complication of
guilt. Perez was not the only favoured votary of the versatile siren.
His rival, or rather his partner, was--Philip of Spain! The revelation
of promiscuous worship, threatened by Escovedo, sounded like a knell to
Perez and the princess. Was it a mad defiance, or a profound prescience,
of the consequences, which, when Escovedo, stung on one occasion beyond
forbearance by the demonstration of iniquity which Othello in his agony
demands of Iago, declared loudly his purpose of divulging every thing to
the king?--was it, we say, the fury or the shrewdness of despair which
then drew _from the lady_ a reply of outrageous and coarse effrontery?
The irrecoverable words being spoken, we think, with M. Mignet, that
"the ruin of Escovedo, whose indiscretions were becoming formidable, was
doubtless sworn, from this moment, by Perez and the princess."

We shall now, with some consciousness of superiority over the German,
Feuerbach, whose common-place murders are flavourless for us, (who were
fellow-citizens of Burke, and rode in an omnibus with Greenacre, just as
Bacon had Perez for a coach-companion,) transcribe the minute continuous
narrative of the assassination of Escovedo, taken down from the lips of
Antonio Enriquez, the page and familiar of Antonio Perez:--

"'Being one day at leisure in the apartment of Diego Martinez the
major-domo of Antonio Perez, Diego asked me whether I knew any of
my countrymen who would be willing to stab a person with a knife.
He added, that it would be profitable and well paid, and that, even
if death resulted from the blow, it was of no consequence. I
answered, that I would speak of it to a mule-driver of my
acquaintance, as in fact I did, and the muleteer undertook the
affair. Afterwards, Diego Martinez gave me to understand, with