Katheline said to her:
“Go into the little house in the Park, which is the favourite abode of the Emperor Charles the Fifth.”
“I am,” said Nele, speaking low and as though she was being stifled, “I am in a little chamber painted green with oil colours. There there is a man bordering upon four and fifty years, bald and gray, with a fair beard on a jutting chin, with an evil look in his gray eyes, full of cunning, of cruelty, and feigned good nature. And this man he is called Sacred Majesty. He is in catarrh and coughs sorely. Beside him is another, young, with an ugly mask like an ape hydrocephalous; that one I saw at Antwerp, it is King Philip. His Sacred Majesty at this moment is reproaching him for having slept abroad last night; doubtless, he saith, to go and find some vile creature in a filthy den in the low quarters of the city. He says his hair stinks of the tavern, which is no pleasure for a king that hath only to choose sweet bodies, skins of satin refreshed in baths of perfumes, and hands of great ladies amorous, which is far better, saith he, than a wild sow, come hardly washed from the arms of a drunken trooper. There is, saith he, never a maiden, wife, or widow who would resist him, among the most noble and beauteous, that illumine their loves with perfumed tapers, not by the greasy glimmer of stinking tallow-dips.
“The king replied that he will obey His Sacred Majesty in all things.
“Then His Sacred Majesty coughs and drinks some mouthfuls of hypocras.
“‘You will presently,’ says he, addressing Philip, ‘see the States General, prelates, nobles, and burgesses: Orange the Silent, Egmont the Vain, de Hornes the Unpopular, Brederode the Lion; and also all those of the Fleece of Gold of whom I make you sovereign. You will see there a hundred wearers of baubles, who would all cut their noses off to have the privilege of hanging them from a gold chain on their breasts, in token of higher nobility.’
“Then, changing his tone and full of sadness, His Sacred Majesty saith to King Philip:
“‘Thou knowest, my son, that I am about to abdicate in thy favour, to give the world a great spectacle and to speak in front of a huge crowd, though hiccupping and coughing—for all my life I have eaten over much, my son—and thy heart must be hard indeed, if having heard me, thou dost not shed a few tears.’
“‘I shall weep, father,’ answers King Philip.
“Then His Sacred Majesty speaks to a valet called Dubois: