f his epistolary vein. That the king had a passion for writing,
notwithstanding he could throw the burden of the correspondence,
when it suited him, on the other party, is proved by the quantity
of letters he left behind him. The example of the monarch seems to
have had its influence on his courtiers; and no reign of that time
is illustrated by a greater amount of written materials from the
hands of the principal actors in it. Far from a poverty of
materials, therefore, the historian has much more reason to
complain of an _embarras de richesses_.

[Sidenote: THE GRANVELLE PAPERS.]

Granvelle filled the highest posts in different parts of the
Spanish empire; and in each of these--in the Netherlands, where he
was minister, in Naples, where he was viceroy, in Spain, where he
took the lead in the cabinet, and in Besancon, whither he retired
from public life--he left ample memorials under his own hand of his
residence there. This was particularly the case with Besancon, his
native town, and the favorite residence to which he turned, as he
tells us, from the turmoil of office to enjoy the sweets of
privacy,--yet not, in truth, so sweet to him as the stormy career
of the statesman, to judge from the tenacity with which he clung to
office.

The cardinal made his library at Besancon the depository, not
merely of his own letters, but of such as were addressed to him. He
preserved them all, however humble the sources whence they came,
and, like Philip, he was in the habit of jotting down his own
reflections in the margin. As Granvelle's personal and political
relations connected him with the most important men of his time, we
may well believe that the mass of correspondence which he gathered
together was immense. Unfortunately, at his death, instead of
bequeathing his manuscripts to some public body, who might have
been responsible for the care of them, he left them to heirs who
were altogether ignorant of their value. In the course of time the
manuscripts found their way to the garret, where they soon came to
be regarded as little better than waste paper. They were pilfered
by the children and domestics, and a considerable quantity was sent
off to a neighboring grocer, who soon converted the correspondence
of the great statesman into wrapping-paper for his