nsier threw himself
into Alva's arms, and told him that Philip alone was the hope of all the
good in France, declaring for himself that he was willing to be torn in
pieces in his behalf, and maintaining the meanwhile, that, should that
pleasant operation be performed, "Philip" would be found written on his
heart. To Blaise de Montluc's self-conceit Alva laid siege in no very
covert manner, assuring him that his master had not given his consent to
Catharine's plan for an interview until he had perused a paper written by
the grim old warrior's hand, in which he had expressed the opinion that
the conference would be productive of wholesome results. The implied
praise was all that was needed to induce Montluc to explain himself more
fully. He was opposed to the exercise of any false humanity. He ascribed
the little success that had attended the Roman Catholic arms in the last
struggle to the half-way measures adopted and the attempt to exercise the
courtesies of peace in time of war. The combatants on either side
addressed their enemies as "my brother" and "my cousin." As for himself,
he had made it a rule to spare no man's life, but to wage a war of
extermination. To this unburdening of his mind Alva replied by giving
Montluc to understand that, as a good Roman Catholic, it should be his
task to discover the means of inducing Charles and his mother to perform
their duty, and, if he failed in this, to disclose to Philip the course
which he must pursue, "since it was impossible to suffer matters to go on,
as they were going, to their ruin."

What the duty of the French king was, in Philip's and Alva's view, is
evidenced by the advice of the "good" Papists which the minister reports
to his master with every mark of approbation. It was, in the first place,
to banish from the kingdom every Protestant minister, and prohibit utterly
any exercise of the reformed religion. The provincial governors, whose
orthodoxy in almost every case could be relied upon, were to be the
instruments in the execution of this work.[369] But, besides this, it
would be necessary to seize a few of the leaders and cut off their heads.
Five or six, it was suggested, would be all the victims required.[370] It
was, in fact, essentially the plan of operations with which Alva undertook
a year or two later the reduction of the Netherlands to submission to
Spanish tyranny and the Papal Church. Treacherous imprisonments of the
most suspected, which could scarcely