[592] "En effet, le prince d'Orange et le comte d'Egmont, les seuls qui se trouvassent à Bruxelles, montrèrent tant de tristesse et de mécontentement de la courte et sèche réponse du Roi, qu'il était à craindre qu'après qu'elle aurait été communiquée aux autres seigneurs, il ne fût pris quelque résolution contraire au service du Roi." Correspondance de Philippe II., tom. I. p. 294.
[593] "Con la venida de Mons. de Chantonnay, mi hermano, á Bruxelles, y su determinacion de encaminarse á estas partes, me paresció tomar color de venir hazia acá, donde no havia estado en 19 años, y ver á madama de Granvella, mi madre, que ha 14 que no la havia visto." Ibid., p. 298.
Granvelle seems to have fondly trusted that no one but Margaret was privy to the existence of the royal letter,—"secret, and written with the king's own hand." So he speaks of his departure in his various letters as a spontaneous movement to see his venerable parent. The secretary Perez must have smiled, as he read one of these letters to himself, since an abstract of the royal despatch appears in his own handwriting. The Flemish nobles also—probably through the regent's secretary, Armenteros—appear to have been possessed of the true state of the case. It was too good a thing to be kept secret.
[594] Schiller, Abfall der Niederlande, p. 147.
Among other freaks was that of a masquerade, at which a devil was seen pursuing a cardinal with a scourge of foxes'tails. "Deinde sequebatur diabolus, equum dicti cardinalis caudis vulpinis fustigans, magna cum totius populi admiratione et scandalo." (Papiers d'Etat de Granvelle, tom. VIII. p. 77.) The fox's tail was a punning allusion to Renard, who took a most active and venomous part in the paper war that opened the revolution. Renard, it may be remembered, was the imperial minister to England in Queen Mary's time. He was the implacable enemy of Granvelle, who had once been his benefactor.
[595] Strada, De Bello Belgico, pp. 161-164.—Vander Haer, De Initiis Tumultuum Belgicorum, p. 166.—Vandervynckt, Troubles des Pays-Bas, tom. II. p. 53.—Correspondance de Philippe II., tom. I. pp. 294, 295.
[596] The date is given by the prince of Orange in a letter to the landgrave of Hesse, written a fortnight after the cardinal's departure. (Archives de la Maison d'Orange-Nassau, tom. I. p. 226.) This fact, public and notorious as it was, is nevertheless told with the greatest discrepancy of dates. Hopper, one of Granvelle's own friends, fixes the date of his departure at the latter end of May. (Recueil et Mémorial, p. 36.) Such discrepancies will not seem strange to the student of history.
[597] "Ejus inimici, qui in senatu erant, non aliter exultavêre quam pueri abeunte ludimagistro." Vita Viglii, p. 38.
Hoogstraten and Brederode indulged their wild humor, as they saw the cardinal leaving Brussels, by mounting a horse,—one in the saddle, the other en croupe,—and in this way, muffled in their cloaks, accompanying the traveller along the heights for half a league or more. Granvelle tells the story himself, in a letter to Margaret, but dismisses it as the madcap frolic of young men. Papiers d'Etat de Granvelle, tom. VII. p. 410, 426.
[598] Archives de la Maison d'Orange-Nassau, tom. I. p. 226.