It was
arranged that the three should go to Paris so soon as the
arrangements were complete, where the Pretender would be
accredited by the exiled friends of Don Antonio residing there--
the Prior of Crato being a party to the plot. From France Frey
Miguel would have worked in Portugal through his agents, and
presently would have gone there himself to stir up a national
movement in favour of a pretender so fully accredited. Thus he
had every hope of restoring Portugal to her independence. Once
this should have been accomplished, Don Antonio would appear in
Lisbon, unmask the impostor, and himself assume the crown of the
kingdom which had been forcibly and definitely wrenched from
Spain.
That was the crafty plan which the priest had laid with a
singleness of aim and a detachment from minor considerations that
never hesitated to sacrifice the princess, together with the
chief instrument of the intrigue. Was the liberation of a
kingdom, the deliverance of a nation from servitude, the
happiness of a whole people, to weigh in the balance against the
fates of a natural daughter of Don John of Austria and a soldier
of fortune turned pastry-cook? Frey Miguel thought not, and his
plot might well have succeeded but for the base strain in
Espinosa and the man's overweening vanity, which had urged him to
dazzle the Gonzales at Valladolid.
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