“M. d’Escoïquiz, on perceiving that every means of gaining access to the king and queen had failed, and that the marriage with Donna Maria had failed also, began to imagine that the only hope of support for the Prince of Asturias would lie in his marriage with a princess of the family of Bonaparte. M. d’Escoïquiz grew, in fact, quite enraptured with the scheme, which he himself had planned, and, wishing to preside over its execution, he left his quiet retreat at Toledo, and came to reside at Madrid. There he became acquainted with Count Orquez, a gentleman much attached to the Prince of Asturias, and communicated to him his alarms and his future plans. In one of their secret conversations, M. de Orquez informed him that Don Diego Godoï, the father of the Prince of the Peace, was distributing money among the garrison of Madrid, and had thus corrupted a great number of the officers. A colonel of dragoons, Don Joaquin Jauregui, gave them intelligence of all that transpired, and informed them that to every officer of distinction, Godoï had said, ‘You see the miserable state into which the kingdom has fallen—the Bourbon dynasty is degenerated—the king cannot live much longer—the prince is a weak, capricious fool. Some change is necessary—we reckon on your aid.’ Throughout the whole of Madrid, the secret agents of Godoï were at work night and day. The Abbé Stata, librarian of St. Isidore, had been imprudent enough to spread inflammatory writings, the object of which was to prove to the Spanish nation, that in the existing crisis, the only hope of salvation lay in an entire confidence in the judgment and experience of the Prince of the Peace.