He set his teeth and put out his hot hands for the goblet; as he drank a sweet languor and a grateful cessation of pain swept over him; he drained the last drop and gave a little sigh as Farnese took the shining cup from his feeble grasp. As he sank back on his cushions he noticed that a drop of the liquid had fallen on the brocade cushion, and lay there like an amber bead holding a spark of sunlight. The Prince of Parma rose silently, and beckoning to the page, left the sick man alone. An exquisite lassitude crept over Don Juan; his limbs relaxed, his breath came easily, he became certain that there were long years of glorious and pleasant life before him; it was only necessary for him to regain his health–to defeat the heretics and return to Spain to confound that villain Perez.… He was slipping out of consciousness; the blue sea of Italy began to rise before his eyes–an endless expanse of celestial colour over which sailed the galleys of Spain, Genoa and Venice bearing down on the infidel fleet. The victor of Lepanto quivered with joy; he thought he was back in Naples, in Sicily; the warm scent of a thousand flowers floated round the rose and amber pillars of the heathen temples, and from the high windows of gold and painted palaces dark-eyed women looked, leaning on folds of glimmering tapestry and twisting wreaths of roses and laurels in gemmed fingers. He saw the myrtle with the frail bridal blossoms, he saw the vineyards with the opulent grapes, he saw ladies in dresses stiff with jewels and heavy sleeves slipping from polished shoulders, he saw peasant girls with flushed faces and dusky hair.… Then these pictures faded; he was in the dark silence of the Escurial; his terrible brother was speaking to him, caressing him; then Perez pulled a curtain back, and he saw his confidant Escovedo, lying mangled on a bier, bloody, with a fearful face. Don Juan moaned and opened his eyes; he was light-headed; he beat his hands on the cushions. “Escovedo!” he muttered. “Escovedo!” The pigeon above, startled by his sudden movement, flew out over his head and away into freedom through the broken wall. Juan of Austria shivered and blenched before the swift flash of the white wings as if an angel had passed him. “I am a great sinner,” he said with trembling lips. He remembered how the Pope had embraced and blessed him after Lepanto; he hoped that, in case he died, God would remember it too, and how he had slain the infidel on the coast of Africa. His mind cleared, he looked round for Farnese, he called his secretary, his page, but no one came. He lay quite still, thinking now of the great ambition, the great chimera of his life, the passionate desire to be recognised as royal, as a Prince, to one day be a King. He had dreamt that he might be King of many countries, even King of England with Marie Stewart for wife, but he had never attained even recognition as a Prince of Spain.