illness was a convenient one, and that such diseases are very apt to
attack individuals whom tyrants are disposed to remove from their path,
while desirous, at the same time, to save appearances. It would
certainly be presumptuous to accept implicitly the narrative of de Thou,
which is literally followed by Hoofd and by many modern writers. On the
other hand, it would be an exaggeration of historical scepticism to
absolve Philip from the murder of his son, solely upon negative
testimony. The people about court did not believe in the crime. They
saw no proofs of it. Of course they saw none. Philip would take good
care that there should be none if he had made up his mind that the death
of the Prince should be considered a natural one. And priori argument,
which omits the character of the suspected culprit, and the extraordinary
circumstances of time and place, is not satisfactory. Philip thoroughly
understood the business of secret midnight murder. We shall soon have
occasion to relate the elaborate and ingenious method by which the
assassination of Montigny was accomplished and kept a profound secret
from the whole world, until the letters of the royal assassin, after
three centuries' repose, were exhumed, and the foul mystery revealed.
Philip was capable of any crime. Moreover, in his letter to his aunt,
Queen Catharine of Portugal, he distinctly declares himself, like
Abraham, prepared to go all lengths in obedience to the Lord. "I have
chosen in this matter," he said, "to make the sacrifice to God of my own
flesh and blood, and to prefer His service and the universal welfare to
all other human considerations." Whenever the letter to Pius V. sees the
light, it will appear whether the sacrifice which the monarch thus made
to his God proceeded beyond the imprisonment and condemnation of his son,
or was completed by the actual immolation of the victim.

With regard to the Prince himself, it is very certain that, if he had
lived, the realms of the Spanish Crown would have numbered one tyrant