And then what a revulsion in the last two acts! The great scene of the third act leaves an impression that the world's affairs are not in such bad hands after all. Posa does not convince the king's mind, but he finds his heart and wins his confidence. One has the feeling that, if he bide his time and use some tact, he can accomplish all that he desires. But to our amazement he gives up the king and enters upon a desperate game of double-dealing in which he deceives everybody. He forms the plan of sending Carlos to the Netherlands as the leader of a revolt. Of this plan he says nothing to his friend, nor does he tell him of his own new relation to the king. Instead he wraps himself in mystery and asks Carlos for his letter-case. This he turns over to the king, and gets a warrant for the arrest of Carlos. The young prince, suspecting quite reasonably that he has been betrayed, goes to Eboli for enlightenment. Here Posa finds him and draws his dagger upon the woman, as if she were the possessor of some terrible secret,--which in fact she is not. Then he relents and arrests Carlos without explanation. He now writes a compromising letter which he knows will cause his own death. Then, after some delay, he goes to Carlos and tries to explain his strange conduct, and while he is telling his story the bullet of the king's assassin finds him. Carlos mourns the Great Departed as a pattern of unexampled heroic virtue, but one can have little sympathy with the panegyric, especially after one learns that Posa was a traitor from the beginning. There would be little profit in discussing the last two acts of 'Don Carlos' with respect to their inherent reasonableness. It is possible to frame an intelligible theory of Posa's conduct, but not one which is perfectly coherent, and least of all one which shall harmonize with the impression produced by the first three acts. There we have an amiable idealist, whom we can at least understand; here a madman smitten, like Fiesco, with a mania for managing a large and dangerous intrigue all in his own way, and accomplishing his ends by modes of action which seem to him heroic, but to the ordinary mind utterly preposterous. Thus he accounts for his failure to confide his plans to Carlos by saying that he was 'beguiled by false delicacy',--which seems to mean that his relation to the king was felt by him as a breach of friendship. But how strange that a man with public ends in view should feel thus under the circumstances! So too his self-sacrifice is nothing but heroic folly, since his death in no way betters the chances of Carlos for escape. The flight would have had a better chance of success had Posa omitted his heroics altogether and quietly planned to escape with his friend. In fine, we have to do here with entirely abnormal psychic processes. The reader and still more the spectator is bewildered by Posa, and does not know any better than Carlos and the king know how to take him.[71]