t once tranquillize the insurgents. All other measures will
prove abortive, and you will depopulate the country.

Regent. Have you forgotten with what aversion the mere suggestion of
toleration was rejected by my brother? Know you not, how in every letter
he urgently recommends to me the maintenance of the true faith? That he
will not hear of tranquility and order being restored at the expense of
religion? Even in the provinces, does he not maintain spies, unknown to
us, in order to ascertain who inclines to the new doctrines? Has he not,
to our astonishment, named to us this or that individual residing in our
very neighbourhood, who, without its being known, was obnoxious to the
charge of heresy? Does he not enjoin harshness and severity? and am I
to be lenient? Am I to recommend for his adoption measures of indulgence
and toleration? Should I not thus lose all credit with him, and at once
forfeit his confidence?

Machiavel. I know it. The king commands and puts you in full possession
of his intentions. You are to restore tranquillity and peace by measures
which cannot fail still more to embitter men's minds, and which must
inevitably kindle the flames of war from one extremity of the country to
the other. Consider well what you are doing. The principal merchants
are infected--nobles, citizens, soldiers. What avails persisting in
our opinion, when everything is changing around us? Oh, that some good
genius would suggest to Philip that it better becomes a monarch to
govern burghers of two different creeds, than to excite them to mutual
destruction.

Regent. Never let me hear such words again. Full well I know that
the policy of statesmen rarely maintains truth and fidelity; that
it excludes from the heart candour, charity, toleration. In secular
affairs, this is, alas! only too true; but shall we trifle with God as
we do with each other? Shall we be indifferent to our established faith,
for the sake of which so many have sacrificed their lives? Shall we
abandon it to these far-fetched, uncertain, and self-contradicting
heresies?

Machiavel. Think not the worse of me for what I have uttered.

Regent. I know you and your fidelity. I know too that a man may be
both honest and sagacious, and yet miss the best and nearest way to the
salvation of his soul. There are others, Machiavel, men whom I esteem,
yet whom I needs must blame.

Machiavel. To whom do you refer?

Regent. I must confess that Egmont caused me to-day