Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: lip was on a level with the point of the nose. This was Fernando, Prince of Asturias, who, in his own person, centred all the evil qualities of both his Bourbon and Habsburg ancestors without any of their virtues ; a man of undoubted ability, beloved to frenzy by a generous, loyal people, who made greater sacrifices for him than a nation ever made for a ruler ; but a prince who yet, through the whole of a long life, belied every promise, betrayed every friend, repaid every sacrifice by persecution, rewarded love and attachment by cruelty and injustice; and who tfrus early began by treason to an over-indulgent father an evil career which was to bring untold misery to his country, and a heritage of war of which the end has not yet been reached. By the side of the prince walked his father, a stout, elderly, red-faced gentleman, immersed in grief and followed by the ministers and other courtiers, who thus conveyed the heir-apparent a prisoner to his apartments after his examination on the charge of treason. The next day there appeared on the walls of the capital a pathetic address of the King to his people, telling them how his son had been seduced into a wicked conspiracy against the throne. But the Madrilenos could believe no evil of their beloved Fernando, and once more they made a scapegoat of the Choricero, who, they said, had invented a false plot to ruin the heir to the crown. Fernando was no hero, and before many hours had passed, with incredible baseness, he betrayed all his accomplices and made a clean breast of his evil-doing to the Queen. He had, he said, written secretly to GODOY TKIUMPHANT. 91 Napoleon, he had signed a decree appointing the Duke of Infantado governor of Castile, speaking of the King as dead ; but it was all the fault of those who advised him, an...