And if I had any suspicion that you were aware
of the contents of this letter, I would send you this instant to be
hanged."

The unlucky despatch-bearer protested his innocence of all complicity
with Pallavicini, and his ignorance of the tenor of the communication by
which the Duke's wrath had been so much excited. He was then searched and
cross-examined most carefully by Richardot and other counsellors, and his
innocence being made apparent-he was ultimately discharged.

The letter of Pallavicini was simply an attempt to sound Farnese as to
his sentiments in regard to a secret scheme, which could afterwards be
arranged in form, and according, to which he was to assume the
sovereignty of the Netherlands himself, to the exclusion of his King, to
guarantee to England the possession of the cautionary towns, until her
advances to the States should be refunded, and to receive the support and
perpetual alliance of the Queen in his new and rebellious position.

Here was additional evidence, if any were wanting, of the universal
belief in his disloyalty; and Alexander, faithful, if man ever were to
his master--was cut to the heart, and irritated almost to madness, by
such insolent propositions. There is neither proof nor probability that
the Queen's government was implicated in this intrigue of Pallavicini,
who appears to have been inspired by the ambition of achieving a bit of
Machiavellian policy, quite on his own account. Nothing came of the
proposition, and the Duke; having transmitted to the King a minute
narrative of, the affair, together with indignant protestations of the
fidelity, which all the world seemed determined to dispute, received most
affectionate replies from that monarch, breathing nothing but unbounded
confidence in his nephew's innocence and devotion.

Such assurances from any other man in the world might have disarmed
suspicion, but Alexander knew his master too well to repose upon his
word, and remembered too bitterly the last hours of Don John of Austria
--whose dying pillow he had soothed, and whose death had been hastened,
as he knew, either by actual poison or by the hardly less fatal venom of
slander--to regain tranquillity as to his own position.

The King was desirous that Pallavicini should be invited over to
Flanders, in order that Alexander, under pretence of listening to his
propositions, might draw from the Genoese all the particulars of his
scheme, and then, at leisure, inflict the punis