Such vengeance never can produce any but the most fatal results.
You yourself must die, in the first place, a degrading and painful death on the scaffold, and you die leaving behind you a ruined girl, who must bury herself in a convent and never be seen by her worldly equals again.
And besides that, you have deprived your King of a beloved brother, and Spain of her most brilliant general.

Could anything be worse ?" "Yes.

There are worse things than that, your Majesty, and worse things have been done.

It would have been a thousand times worse if I had done the deed and cast the blame of it on a man so devoted to me that he would bear the guilt in my stead, and a hundred thousand times worse if I had then held up that man to the execration of mankind, and tortured him with every distortion of evidence which great falsehoods can put upon a little truth.

That would indeed have been far worse than anything I have done.