“Since they have taken their stand on this vain ground,” cried Sebastian to the governor, “my hour of triumph is at hand. Your senate dare not have the boldness or injustice to deny bringing me to the proof. I demand to be seen of the Portuguese: I am anxious to court the scrutiny of those who have known me from infancy to manhood. There are personal marks about most men which may certify them to others: my body is remarkable for them: let me be seen by those now living that have served about my person! I challenge your republic to produce me before the world. I invite the amplest investigation: if they find me not what I maintain myself, Sebastian the King of Portugal, let my head be smitten off--carry this message, sir, to the Doge.” Fluctuating, and fearful, and interested, the Doge and his counsellors were ill-disposed to grant the fair demands of him they were betraying: the threats of Rome, and the persuasions of Spain, could not induce them to deliver up Sebastian to certain destruction; but they temporized and qualified, and by detaining the object of Philip’s alarm till he should gain time to win over Sebastian’s friends to his views, they hoped to obtain the dazzling favors he promised, and to avert the curses denounced by the descendant of Peter. Morosini already reaped the fruit of his infidelity: he was caressed by the new monarch of Spain, and gratified with the distinction of being admitted into the order of its grandees: he was in short become the secret spy of Philip. No reply was vouchsafed to the frequent messages of the injured King, and as time wore away, his amazed mind began to admit the horrid thought that Kara Aziek’s prophecy was indeed true, and that they were doomed to finish their days in imprisonment together. But what were become of his friends, and of those princes who had entered into a compact for his sake? they had not abandoned him. No sooner did the news of this atrocious act meet the different agents of Sebastian on their arrival at Venice, where they had hastened to see and acknowledge him, than they importuned the senate for permission to visit him in his prison, in order to satisfy themselves whether it was or was not their lawful King. The senate were deaf to their intreaties, and again De Castro, Texere, and Don Christopher of Crato, hastened back to England, Holland, and France, to procure the interference of these powers with the republic, for a sight of him who proclaimed himself their sovereign. The Duke of Medina Sidonia vehemently urged at the court of Castille, his abhorrence of the perfidy and injustice of the Venetians, calling on his monarch to assert the honour of Spain, by disavowing such conduct, and proceeding to an open investigation of the stranger’s story.