y. He was extremely incensed at the nomination of Alva to
the Netherlands, because he had hoped that either the King would go
thither or entrust the mission to him, in either of which events he
should be rid for a time of the paternal authority, or at least of the
paternal presence. It seems to be well ascertained that Carlos nourished
towards his father a hatred which might lead to criminal attempts, but
there is no proof that such attempts were ever made. As to the fabulous
amours of the Prince and the Queen, they had never any existence save in
the imagination of poets, who have chosen to find a source of sentimental
sorrow for the Infante in the arbitrary substitution of his father for
himself in the marriage contract with the daughter of Henry the Second.
As Carlos was but twelve or thirteen years of age when thus deprived of a
bride whom he had never seen, the foundation for a passionate regret was
but slight. It would hardly be a more absurd fantasy, had the poets
chosen to represent Philip's father, the Emperor Charles, repining in his
dotage for the loss of "bloody Mary," whom he had so handsomely ceded to
his son. Philip took a bad old woman to relieve his father; he took a
fair young princess at his son's expense; but similar changes in state
marriages were such matters of course, that no emotions were likely to be
created in consequence. There is no proof whatever, nor any reason to
surmise; that any love passages ever existed between Don Carlos and his
step-mother.

As to the process and the death of the Prince, the mystery has not yet
been removed, and the field is still open to conjecture. It seems a
thankless task to grope in the dark after the truth at a variety of
sources; when the truth really exists in tangible shape if profane hands
could be laid upon it. The secret is buried in the bosom of the Vatican.
Philip wrote two letters on the subject to Pius V. The contents of the
first (21st January, 1568) are known. He informed the pontiff that he had
been obliged to imprison his son, and promised that he would, in the
conduct of the affair, omit nothing which could be expected of a father
and of a just and prudent king. The second letter, in which he narrated,
or is supposed to have narrated, the whole course of the tragic
proceedings, down to the death and burial of the Prince, has never yet
been made public. There are hopes that this secret missive, after three
centuries of darkness, may soon see the l