Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/276

132 TROUBLES IN CASTILE AND ARAGON. PART courtesy as might dissipate any distrust he had con- '. ceived of him. Gordo, thus assured, was invited at one of those interviews to withdraw into a re- tired apartment, where the prince wished to confer with him on business of moment. On entering the chamber he was surprised by the sight of the public executioner, the hangman of the city, whose presence togetlier with that of a priest, and the apparatus of death with which the apartment was garnished, revealed at once the dreadful nature of his destiny. He was then charged with the manifold crimes of which he had been guilty, and sentence of death was pronounced on him. In vain did he appeal to Ferdinand, pleading the services which he had ren- dered on more than one occasion to his father. Ferdinand assured him, that these should be grate- fully remembered in the protection of his children, and then, bidding him unburden his conscience to his confessor, consigned him to the hand of the executioner. His body was exposed that very day in the market-place of the city, to the dismay of his friends and adherents, most of whom paid the penalty of their crimes in the ordinary course of justice. This extraordinary proceeding is highh- characteristic of the unsettled times in which it occurred ; when acts of violence often superseded the regular operation of the law, even in those countries, whose forms of government approached the nearest to a determinate constitution. It will doubtless remind the reader of the similar proceed- ing imputed to Louis the Eleventh, in the admira