That he still loved Ana with a
constancy far from royal, that she loved Perez, that Perez and she
feared that Escovedo would denounce them to the King, is M. Mignet's
theory of the efficient cause of Escovedo's murder. Yet M. Mignet
holds, and rightly, that Philip had made up his mind, as far as he
ever did make up his mind, to kill Escovedo, long before that
diplomatist became an inconvenient spy on the supposed lovers.
To raise matters to the tragic height of the _Phaedra_ of Euripides,
Perez was said to be the natural son of his late employer, Gomez, the
husband of his alleged mistress. Probably Perez was nothing of the
sort; he was the bastard of a man of his own name, and his alleged
mistress, the widow of Gomez, may even have circulated the other
story to prove that her relations with Perez, though intimate, were
innocent. They are a pretty set of people!
As for Escovedo, he and Perez had been friends from their youth
upwards. While Perez passed from the service of Gomez to that of
Philip, in 1572 Escovedo was appointed secretary to the nobly
adventurous Don John of Austria. The Court believed that he was
intended to play the part of spy on Don John, but he fell under the
charm of that gallant heart, and readily accepted, if he did not
inspire, the most daring projects of the victor of Lepanto, the Sword
of Christendom.
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