which he was accredited--the very head-quarters of the League. His
salary was large, his way of living magnificent, his insolence
intolerable.

"Tassis is gone to the Netherlands," wrote envoy Busbecq to the Emperor,
"and thence is to proceed to Spain. Don Bernardino has arrived in his
place. If it be the duty of a good ambassador to expend largely, it
would be difficult to find a better one than he; for they say 'tis his
intention to spend sixteen thousand dollars yearly in his embassy. I
would that all things were in correspondence; and that he were not in
other respects so inferior to Tassis."

It is, however, very certain that Mendoza was not only a brave soldier,
but a man of very considerable capacity in civil affairs, although his
inordinate arrogance interfered most seriously with his skill as a
negotiator. He was, of course, watching with much fierceness the
progress of these underhand proceedings between the French court and the
rebellious subjects of his master, and using threats and expostulations
in great profusion. "Mucio," too, the great stipendiary of Philip, was
becoming daily more dangerous, and the adherents of the League were
multiplying with great celerity.

The pretender of Portugal, Don Antonio, prior of Crato, was also in
Paris; and it was the policy of both the French and the English
governments to protect his person, and to make use of him as a rod over
the head of Philip. Having escaped, after the most severe sufferings, in
the mountains of Spain, where he had been tracked like a wild beast, with
a price of thirty thousand crowns placed upon his head, he was now most
anxious to stir the governments of Europe into espousing his cause, and
into attacking Spain through the recently acquired kingdom of Portugal.