Tassis in Paris was even more despondent, and he feared, what proved to be true, that the rack would soon draw from the prisoner all he knew. Time after time Throckmorton was tormented, as were his brother-in-law and two other relatives, and sufficient was torn from them, together with the known correspondence, to furnish a good pretext at last for expelling Mendoza from England with ignominy. On the 19th January, 1584, a formal summons for him to appear before the Council was handed to him. “If these gentlemen wish to see me in my private capacity,” he replied to Beal, the Secretary, “let them come to my house as I went to theirs when I wanted to see them. But if they are sitting in Council, I would wait upon them, as an ambassador should; but I warn them that if I open my ears to what they have to say, I shall not shut my mouth to answer them, as the service of my master may demand.” He says he gave this answer because he knew the intention was to expel him, and on the Councillors answering that they wished to see him officially, he went to the Lord Chancellor’s house to meet them. Walsingham spoke Italian better than the rest, and formulated the Queen’s complaint. Mendoza, he said, had conspired with Guise to liberate the Queen of Scots; he was known to be in communication with Mary, with the French plotters, and with Throckmorton, and he must leave the country within fifteen days. “It is strange,” sneered Mendoza, “that the Queen should have summoned them and himself for such a trifle as this. What you tell me are mere dreams, hardly worthy of an answer. These general accusations are absurd, mainly extorted by the rack, and unsupported by details.” Very different were the charges he brought against the Queen of trying to injure his master, King Philip: and he launched out his usual string of complaints, from the seizure of the Spanish treasure fifteen years before to the present helping of Don Antonio against his rightful sovereign. As for his leaving England, that, as his hearers well knew, would delight him, and he would go the moment his master instructed him to do so in answer to a despatch sent by the Queen requesting his recall. The Councillors rose angrily at this and said that nothing of the sort would be done: he must leave England at once: “and they explained their past acts with impertinences that I dare not repeat to your Majesty, the least of them being that I ought to be very thankful that the Queen had not ordered me to be punished for what I had done.”