During Floridablanca’s influence with the King, a manuscript satire had been circulated against that minister, in which he was charged with having defrauded one _Salucci_, an Italian banker connected with the Spanish Government. Too conscious, it should seem, of the truth of the accusation, Floridablanca suspected none but the injured party of being the contriver and circulator of the lampoon. The obnoxious composition was, however, written in better Spanish than Salucci could command, and the smarting minister could not be satisfied without punishing the author. His spies having informed him that the Marquis de Manca, a man of wit and talent, was intimate at Salucci’s, he had no need of farther proofs against him. The banker was immediately banished out of the kingdom, and the poet confined to the city of Burgos, under the inspection and control of the civil authorities. But the time was now arrived when these men, who were too well acquainted with the state of Spain to look for redress at the hands of justice, were to obtain satisfaction from the spirit of revenge which urged the Queen to seek the ruin of her husband’s minister. Charles IV. being informed of Floridablanca’s conduct towards Salucci and Manca, the last was recalled to Court. His enemy’s papers, including a large collection of _billets-doux_, were seized and put into the Marquis’s hands, to be used as documents in a secret process instituted against the minister: who, according to his own rules of justice, was, in the mean time, sent a prisoner to the fortress of Pamplona. His confinement, however, was not prolonged beyond the necessary time to ruin him in the King’s opinion; and upon the marriage of two of the Royal Princesses, an _indulto_, or pardon, was issued, by which, though declared guilty of embezzling forty-two millions of _reals_, he was enlarged from his close confinement, and allowed to reside at Murcia, his native town.