“Make your way into the little house which is called the Park House, and is the favourite residence of the Emperor Charles the Fifth.”
Whereupon Nele began to speak, in a low voice, as though she were half suffocated.
“I am standing in a small room painted green. There is a man in the room. He is about fifty-four years of age, and he has a bald head and a protruding chin with a white beard growing upon it. His grey eyes have a wicked, crafty look, filled with cruelty and false kindness. And this is the man they call ‘His Most Sacred Majesty.’ He suffers from a catarrh and always keeps coughing. Beside him is another, a young man with an ugly face like that of a hydrocephalous monkey. I saw him once at Antwerp. He is King Philip. At the present moment he is being rebuked by His Sacred Majesty for having slept out last night away from home. Doubtless, says His Majesty, he was at some brothel in company of a trollop of the town. His hair, it seems, smells of the tavern, no place, that, for a King to seek his pleasures in, he who may have his choice of all the sweetest bodies in the world, of skin like satin fresh from perfumed baths, and of hands of high-born ladies, very amorous. Such as these, says His Majesty, are more fit for him, surely, than some half-mad wench that is come, scarcely washed, from the arms of a drunken soldier. For there is not one among all the ladies, the most noble, the most beautiful, whether virgin, wife, or widow, that would resist King Philip! And they would be proud to give him of their love—not by a greasy glimmer of stinking tallow, but by the light of scented tapers made of finest wax.
“The King replies that he will obey His Sacred Majesty in all things. Whereupon His Sacred Majesty has a fit of coughing and drinks some draughts of hippocras. After which he addresses his son, sorrowfully, in these words:
“‘You must know, my son, that very soon I am to give to the world the mighty spectacle of the abdication of my throne in the favour of you, my son. And I shall speak before a great crowd of people, coughing and hiccuping as I am—for all my life I have eaten too heartily. And very hard-hearted must you be if you shed no tears when you hear what I shall have to say.
“‘I shall shed many tears,’ answers King Philip.
“And now His Sacred Majesty is speaking to his valet, a man named Dubois.
“‘Bring me some sugar dipped in Madeira,’ he cries. ‘I have the hiccups. Pray heaven they do not attack me when I am making my speech before all those people. Oh, that goose I had last night for dinner! Will it never pass? I think I had better take a glass of Orleans wine? No, it is too harsh. Or perhaps if I ate some anchovies? No, they are oily. Dubois, there, give me some Roman wine!’
“Dubois does as he is told, then dresses his master in a robe of crimson velvet, wraps a golden cloak about him, girds on his sword, places the globe and sceptre in his hands, and on his head the crown. Thus arrayed, His Sacred Majesty goes forth from the Park House, riding on a little mule and followed by King Philip and many notables. Presently they arrive at a large building called the Palace, and they come to a room wherein is a tall thin man, most richly dressed. He is the Prince of Orange, William, surnamed the Silent.
“‘Do I look well, Cousin William?’ His Sacred Majesty inquires.