Still he could not be brought to believe in his danger. When the sentence was read to him, he bowed his grand head, covered with the glossy curls, and was silent. A defiant smile parted his lips, as, roused from his usual apathy, his eyes travelled slowly round from one to the other of his judges. Had not a fortune-teller predicted he should die in _Cadahalso_, the name of one of his fiefs? And he was now in prison in Valladolid! But he forgot that, in Spanish, _Cadahalso_ also means _scaffold_, and that on the scaffold he was condemned to die. * * * * * He was condemned, but the warrant of death had not yet been signed by the king; at any time he might revoke it. The queen knew this and watched him. The fatal paper lay on a table in his retiring-room, untouched. Long Don Juan contemplated it in silence, absorbed in more gloomy reflections than he had ever felt before. He imagined he was alone, but the queen, who never left him, was concealed behind the arras. Poor helpless, foolish sovereign! the atrocity of the act bewildered him. A confusion of ideas troubled his spirit. As he gazed, the letters stood out as if in characters of blood before his eyes. What! he told himself, as he cast sad glances upon the paper, and pang after pang of real sorrow shot from his inmost soul--the death of Luna, whom he had loved when yet a little child, and his firm hand upheld his tottering steps! The man in whom he had placed implicit trust and whose genius left to him only the luxury, not the cares, of sovereignty. Luna, the brave, the poetic knight, whose romantic career had fired his fancy with the enthusiasm of a second Cid! Luna, his favourite, friend, the support of his throne! The touch of his familiar hand seemed to grasp his own! The superb majesty of his presence became tangible to him as he paced up and down the apartment, a prey to a waking vision, called up by the vivid image of his life. The constable! Always the constable! Where was he? Would he answer to his call, and make his life pleasant to him as heretofore? For a moment he forgot the existence of the queen. Her blandishments and pleadings faded away as a mist before the sun. His weak mind, unable to battle with such a tumult of ideas, recalled no reason why his great minister should not be before him. THERE, opposite, on the seat where he had sat so many years, and raised his sonorous voice to comfort him. Dead! Condemned! Impossible! It was an evil dream. His hand was already outstretched to rend the parchment, the sight of which had caused him such agitation, and by swift messengers to recall him to his side, when Queen Isabel stood before him. “What! my dear lord!” she cried, in that melodious voice which she never allowed to reach his ears but as a harmony, laying her hand upon his as she spoke and drawing him from the table where the sentence lay, “can it be true that you hesitate, when my safety and that of the nation are at stake?”