was confiscated, under a clause in the late King’s will by which he revoked the immense gifts he had made during his lifetime. The confessor Alliaga was deprived of his post of Grand Inquisitor and relegated to the obscurity of the monastery from which he had emerged; and several other highly-placed personages lost their charges and were banished from Court. The Count of Saldagna,[159] Lerma’s younger son, thanks to his having had the good fortune to marry a daughter of the old Duke del Infantado,[160] who was held in general esteem, was more leniently dealt with than his father and elder brother, and was merely deprived of his office of _cavalerizzo mayor_ (Grand Equerry) and ordered to go and fight the Dutch in the Netherlands. But, a day or two later, “one of the Queen’s maids-of-honour, Doña Mariana de Cordoba, presented to the King a promise of marriage which the Count of Saldagna had given her,[161] and the King commanded the said count to prepare to accomplish it.” The royal command appears to have been accompanied by an intimation that, in the event of the count’s refusal to do the lady justice, most unpleasant things would happen to him. Anyway, Saldagna appears to have been greatly alarmed, and promised the King to lead Doña Mariana to the altar “on the first day after the octave of Easter” (April 21). Now, when Bassompierre was setting out for Spain, Anne of Austria, who was much attached to the Sandoval family, “had pressingly recommended to him all that concerned the Duke of Lerma”; and, aware of this, Saldagna’s aunt the Countess of Lemos[162] and other relatives and friends of his, who were in despair at the prospect of his contracting a _mésalliance_, to which, in their opinion, death itself would almost be preferable, went to the ambassador and besought him, with tears in their eyes, “to aid in preventing this marriage by every means he was able to devise.” The recollection of his own troubles with Marie d’Entragues naturally inclined Bassompierre to view Saldagna’s with a sympathetic eye, and, apart from this, he had a decided weakness for meddling in other people’s affairs in a benevolent kind of way. He knew, too, that, by helping the Sandovals, he would establish a claim upon the gratitude of Anne of Austria, who, though she had little or no influence at present, might one day possess a great deal. He accordingly promised them to do what he could to deliver their relative from the sad fate which threatened him, and proceeded to San Geronimo--where Saldagna had gone into retreat on the plea of illness, to escape the remonstrances of his friends and the mocking felicitations of his enemies--with the resolution to screw that nobleman’s courage up to what Shakespeare calls the sticking-place, and then to propose to smuggle him out of Spain, disguised as one of his servants.