gmont. These letters were of directly opposite tenor; one dispensing
with Egmont's presence at Madrid,--which had been talked of,--the other
inviting him there. Margaret was to give the one which, under the
circumstances, she thought expedient. The duchess was greatly distressed
by her brother's manoeuvring. She saw that the course she must pursue was
not the course which he would prefer. Philip did not understand her
countrymen so well as she did.

[592] "En effet, le prince d'Orange et le comte d'Egmont, les seuls qui
se trouvassent a Bruxelles, montrerent tant de tristesse et de
mecontentement de la courte et seche reponse du Roi, qu'il etait a
craindre qu'apres qu'elle aurait ete communiquee aux autres seigneurs,
il ne fut pris quelque resolution contraire au service du Roi."
Correspondance de Philippe II., tom. I. p. 294.

[593] "Con la venida de Mons. de Chantonnay, mi hermano, a Bruxelles, y
su determinacion de encaminarse a estas partes, me parescio tomar color
de venir hazia aca, donde no havia estado en 19 anos, y ver a madama de
Granvella, mi madre, que ha 14 que no la havia visto." Ibid., p. 298.

Granvelle seems to have fondly trusted that no one but Margaret was
privy to the existence of the royal letter,--"secret, and written with
the king's own hand." So he speaks of his departure in his various
letters as a spontaneous movement to see his venerable parent. The
secretary Perez must have smiled, as he read one of these letters to
himself, since an abstract of the royal despatch appears in his own
handwriting. The Flemish nobles also--probably through the regent's
secretary, Armenteros--appear to have been possessed of the true state
of the case. It was too good a thing to be kept secret.

[594] Schiller, Abfall der Niederlande, p. 147.

Among other freaks was that of a masquerade, at which a devil was seen
pursuing a cardinal with a scourge of foxes'tails. "Deinde sequebatur
diabolus, equum dicti cardinalis caudis vulpinis fustigans, magna cum
totius populi admiratione et scandalo." (Papiers d'Etat de Granvelle,
tom. VIII. p. 77.) The fox's tail was a punning allusion to Renard, who
took a most active and venomous part in the paper war that opened the
revolution. Renard, it may be remembered, was the imperial minister to
England in Queen Mary's time. He was the implacable enemy of Granvelle,
who had once been his benefactor.

[595] Strada, De Bello Belgico, pp. 161-164.--Vander Haer, De Initiis
Tumu