The histories published by Cabrera, Wander-Hamen, Opmero and Estrada, all agree with the secret memoirs of the times which I have read. It is not surprising, then, that the Prince of Orange, in his manifesto against Philip II., should impute to him the death of his son[63]; that James Augustus de Thou, a French contemporary historian, has done the same, from the accounts given him by Louis de Foix, a French architect, employed in building the Escurial, and Pedro Justiniani, a Venetian nobleman, who resided some time in Spain; although he was mistaken in making the holy office interfere in this affair; in supposing that the prince died, in a few hours, from poison; and in advancing some other errors on the authority of his two informants[64]. It is not more surprising that the authors cited by Gregorio Leti have stated things which appear to be written by the pen of a novelist or romance writer, because the death of the prince being occasioned by a mysterious medicine, administered according to a private order, no one doubted that it was caused by violence, and endeavoured to conjecture how it was done. But the truth is always discovered sooner or later, and after a century and a half, we find so many isolated facts and accounts of this event, that they produce conviction, and show that the death of Don Carlos had the external appearances of a natural death, and that he himself considered it to be so. The accounts of some foreign historians, of the result of the medicine, have been refuted by authentic documents: those of the writers, who have composed romances under the names of histories, are equally disproved. I shall therefore proceed to relate the facts as they occurred.