"Poor old man," said Calderon, turning towards the cardinal, who stood
spell-bound and speechless, "thy life at least is safe. For me, I defy
fate! Lead on!"

The Prince of Spain soon recovered from the shock which the death of
Beatriz at first occasioned him. New pleasures chased away even remorse.
He appeared again in public a few days after the arrest of Calderon; and
he made strong intercession on behalf of his former favourite. But even
had the Inquisition desired to relax its grasp, or Uzeda to forego his
vengeance, so great was the exultation of the people at the fall of the
dreaded and obnoxious secretary, and so numerous the charges which party
malignity added to those which truth could lay at his door, that it would
have required a far bolder monarch than Philip the Third to have braved
the voice of a whole nation for the sake of a disgraced minister. The
prince himself was soon induced, by new favourites, to consider any
further interference on his part equally impolitic and vain; and the Duke
d'Uzeda and Don Gaspar de Guzman were minions quite as supple, while they
were companions infinitely more respectable.

One day, an officer, attending the levee of the prince, with whom he was
a special favourite, presented a memorial requesting the interest of his
highness for an appointment in the royal armies, that, he had just
learned by an express was vacant.

"And whose death comes so opportunely for thy rise, Don Alvar?" asked the
Infant.

"Don Martin Fonseca. He fell in the late skirmish, pierced by a hundred
wounds."