No King ever placed his favour more unworthily than Charles, but there was a sincerity in his friendship which almost amounts to virtue, and would have done honour to a better monarch. The Queen’s attachment also, which is more easily explained, had a character of enduring passion and self-abandonment seldom to be found in one at once so vicious and so weak. From this time she wearied Murat with letters, written in the most barbarous French and most confused manner, wherein she expressed her fears and her resentments. Ferdinand, she said, was the enemy of the French, though he declared the contrary. Infantado was very wicked; the priest Escoiquiz one of the most wicked; and San Carlos, the most crafty of all, had received all that he had from the King at the solicitation of the poor Prince of the Peace, whom he called his relation. She had no other support than the Grand Duke and the Emperor, those two sacred and incomparable persons.... But the Prince of the Peace made the burthen of every letter. “Nothing interests us,” she said, “but the safe condition of our only and innocent friend the Prince of the Peace, the friend of the Grand Duke; even in his prison when he exclaimed on the horrid treatment they were giving him, he called always upon his friend the Grand Duke. Before this conspiracy he wished for his arrival, and that he would deign to accept of his house as a residence.... He had presents to make him.... We are in constant fear of their killing or poisoning him. Let the Grand Duke cause troops to go without telling why, and without giving a moment of time to fire a pistol at him separate the guard that is set over him, which has no other glory in view, no other desire but to kill him, ... that innocent friend, so devoted to the French, to the Grand Duke and the Emperor, the poor Prince of the Peace. They heap crimes on this innocent Prince, our common and only friend, to inflame the public the more, and make them believe it is right to inflict on him all possible infamy. Afterwards they will come to me; ... they will make his head be cut off in public, and afterwards mine, for they say so.... He suffers because he is a friend of the Grand Duke, of the Emperor, and of the French; the Grand Duke and the Emperor are they alone who can save him, and if he be not saved and given to us, the King my husband and I will die.” Every letter was filled with these anxious solicitations: of the throne there seemed to be neither care nor thought; with the mob at Aranjuez before her eyes, and the recollection of Marie Antoinette in her heart, this wretched woman was sick of royalty; she asked only an allowance for the King, herself, and Godoy, upon which they might live all three together, in a situation suiting their health; ... a corner wherein they might quietly finish their days; ... some place near France, to be within reach of help against the bloody hands of his enemies. Her feelings toward Ferdinand were not