That was the crafty plan which the priest had laid with a singleness of aim and a detachment from minor considerations that never hesitated to sacrifice the princess, together with the chief instrument of the intrigue. Was the liberation of a kingdom, the deliverance of a nation from servitude, the happiness of a whole people, to weigh in the balance against the fates of a natural daughter of Don John of Austria and a soldier of fortune turned pastry-cook? Frey Miguel thought not, and his plot might well have succeeded but for the base strain in Espinosa and the man’s overweening vanity, which had urged him to dazzle the Gonzales at Valladolid. That vanity sustained him to the end, which he suffered in October of 1595, a full year after his arrest. To the last he avoided admissions that should throw light upon his obscure identity and origin. “If it were known who I am...” he would say, and there break off. He was hanged, drawn and quartered, and he endured his fate with calm fortitude. Frey Miguel suffered in the same way with the like dignity, after having undergone degradation from his priestly dignity. As for the unfortunate Princess Anne, crushed under a load of shame and humiliation, she had gone to her punishment in the previous July. The Apostolic Commissary notified her of the sentence which King Philip had confirmed. She was to be transferred to another convent, there to undergo a term of four years’ solitary confinement in her cell, and to fast on bread and water every Friday. She was pronounced incapable of ever holding any office, and was to be treated on the expiry of her term as an ordinary nun, her civil list abolished, her title of Excellency to be extinguished, together with all other honours and privileges conferred upon her by King Philip. The piteous letters of supplication that she addressed to the King, her uncle, still exist. But they left the cold, implacable Philip of Spain unmoved. Her only sin was that, yielding to the hunger of her starved heart, and chafing under the ascetic life imposed upon her, she had allowed herself to be fascinated by the prospect of becoming the protectress of one whom she believed to be an unfortunate and romantic prince, and of exchanging her convent for a throne. Her punishment—poor soul—endured for close upon forty years, but the most terrible part of it was not that which lay within the prescription of King Philip, but that which arose from her own broken and humiliated spirit. She had been uplifted a moment by a glorious hope, to be cast down again into the blackest despair, to which a shame unspeakable and a tortured pride were added. Than hers, as I have said, there is in history no sadder story. V. THE END OF THE “VERT GALANT” The Assassination of Henry IV In the year 1609 died the last Duke of Cleves, and King Henry IV. of France and Navarre fell in love with Charlotte de Montmorency.