Alburquerque ought to have despised any attack from that quarter, and more especially one which, by its intemperance and scurrility, so plainly showed in what vile passions it had originated. But he wore his heart for daws to peck at, and his enemies knew but too well the infirmity of his nature. At first he endeavoured to repress or to conceal his feelings, and drew up a short and dignified representation to the Cortes; but this did not satisfy him; notwithstanding the earnest dissuasions of his friends, he determined upon replying to the Junta, and he devoted himself to this composition with an earnestness which made him forgetful both of food and of sleep. Three days were thus employed in a state of restless and feverish anxiety. The wound all this while was rankling, and the venom of the Junta did its work. On the fourth day a frenzy-fever seized him; he felt the approach of the disease, and was perfectly sensible of the cause, for having sent for D. J. M. Blanco White, he took from his pocket, as soon as he saw him, a strip of paper on which he had written, “_como calumniador y enemigo de la patria_,” ... the words which had stung him to the heart, ... and said, “When they ask why I have lost my senses, this paper will answer for me.” ... A dreadful scene ensued; fits of tears were followed by paroxysms of rage, and on the third day of his illness he expired: happily in the course of the disease the sense of his own wrongs, intolerable and fatal as it had proved, gave way to a deeper feeling: he forgot himself in thinking of his country: his repeated exclamations of vengeance upon Napoleon Buonaparte were so vehement and loud that they were distinctly heard by the passers in the street; and his last breath was spent in imprecations upon the tyrant whose wickedness had caused all the unutterable miseries of Spain. Every public honour which the British Government could bestow was paid to the remains of this illustrious man, and his body was deposited in that same vault in Henry VII.’s chapel wherein Marlborough’s had formerly been laid, till it could be sent home, to rest with his ancestors[21]. CHAPTER XXXVII. GRANT AND SUBSCRIPTION FOR THE RELIEF OF THE PORTUGUEZE. OPERATIONS ON THE ALENTEJO FRONTIER. BATTLES OF FUENTES D’ONORO AND ALBUHERA. BADAJOZ UNSUCCESSFULLY BESIEGED BY THE ALLIES. ♦1811.♦