The queen of Spain died, and as there was no fighting for Berwick to do, Louis sent him with a message of condolence for Philip. But peaceful embassies were not for the like of him: he never reached Madrid. An envoy from Philip stopped him on the way and informed him that Barcelona had revolted, and that it was for him to go there and restore order. He flew thither and laid siege to the town. Discovering that the citizens were receiving aid from Majorca he ordered the Spanish fleet to blockade the port, and having made a breach with his cannon he led his men to the assault. They had fought their way to the middle of the town when the garrison offered to surrender. The point then was to save the town from pillage and from those awful scenes which occur when a city is taken by storm. He directed the commander of the garrison not to let his surrender be known, and still to man the barricades. He then ordered a retreat, on the pretence that it was night-fall, and that they must prepare for a more vigorous attack on the morrow. The next morning Barcelona was peacefully theirs. He says it was the first town taken by assault that ever escaped pillage, and in his pious way he attributes it to the grace of God, and says that human skill alone could not have compassed it. During the siege Philip to lose no time, had wooed and won another bride, Elizabeth Farnese daughter of the duke of Parma; and Berwick received one day an order from the king to send the fleet to Genoa to fetch the new queen. He replied that the blockade of the port was essential to the capture of the place, and that not a ship could be spared. The great, lank devil of an Englishman had not improved, and Philip and Elizabeth had to wait. The name Farnese brings up another family which stands out in relief in the tableau of history. You have all been to Rome. You remember in the church of Saint Peter, near the chair in which Peter himself sat when he was pope, a sepulchral monument the finest in the church. It is that of Alexander Farnese, Paul III. Near the banks of the Tiber you remember that vast edifice the Palace Farnese, and on the other side of the river the Farnesina, or little Farnese. You remember the Farnese gardens where they have dug out the foundations of the palace of the Caesars. All these demesnes, except the monument, belonged till recently to the kings of Naples descendants of Philip and Elizabeth. It was the princess of Orsini herself who had chosen a scion of that famous race for Philip’s second wife; and the princess did not fail to repent of it. She had been deceived by one of the greatest scamps in Europe, the Cardinal Alberoni who had assured her that Elizabeth Farnese was a placid little maiden who would show her all the deference the late queen had shown.