Gonzalo Pérez died this year (1566), and Philip II resisted the efforts of Ruy Gómez to obtain his father's vacant secretaryship for Antonio Pérez, giving as a pretext, not his youth, for he was thirty-two, but the laxity of his life and the depravity of his morals.
Taking, however, as a sign of repentance and amendment Antonio Pérez's marriage with Doña Juana de Coello Bozmediano, which was celebrated on the 3rd of January, 1567, D. Philip hastened to bestow on him Gonzalo Pérez's secretaryship, which delighted D. John as much as if it were the summit of his ambitions or the triumph of his interests.
Once having caught the Prince on the weak side of his ambitions, they wished to do so on that of his platonic love. The Princess de Évoli undertook this, attracting him to her house, giving in his honour balls and banquets, and putting before his eyes, and even within his reach, the lady, the object of his then honest intentions, Doña Maria de Mendoza, one of the ladies of the Palace, and it is thought a near kinswoman of the restless, intriguing Princess. Such artifices did the Princess use to influence the will and gain the confidence of the grateful D. John, that years afterwards, when she was no longer the intriguing, restless lady of former times, but the shameless, criminal woman who plotted with Antonio Pérez perfidious treasons which were, incidentally, to ruin D. John himself, the latter wrote, nevertheless, to his friend D. Rodrigo de Mendoza with the utmost affection and blind confidence: "I kiss the hands of my one-eyed lady, and I do not say her eyes until I write it to her, in order that she may remember this her friend, so much her friend now, who cannot do more, nor has anything else to offer her in payment of his debt. And the reason that this message is sent with so much prudence is that, coming from such a distance, it cannot be otherwise."
The figure of Doña Maria de Mendoza appears for a moment in the story of D. John, discoloured and blurred like the melancholy picture of a fading memory, leaving behind the sad trace of a fault repented and wept over, and the painful sequel which human weaknesses always bring. Without the interference of the Princess de Évoli the loves of D. John and Doña Maria would have passed innocently away, as a bright bubble vanishes in the air, without leaving trace or mark or memory. But the influence of this wretched woman gave substance to his dreams and fire to his desires, and at last made the deluded lovers fall down the precipice.