But while we have been thus discoursing, the king has finished his long dispatch, and now hands it to the secretary.  The latter, having vainly struggled with his sleepiness, has at length begun to nod.  Hearing his name pronounced, he starts to his feet, takes the document, which is not yet dry, to sand it, and, desirous to show by his alertness that he has been all the time wide awake, empties over it—­the contents of the inkstand!  Awkward individual!—­there he stands, dumfounded and aghast.  His master quietly resumes his seat, procures fresh materials, and, though it is long past midnight, begins his task anew with that incomparable patience which is “his virtue.”

The perfect equanimity on all occasions, which was the trait in Philip’s character that most impressed such of his contemporaries as were neither his adherents nor his enemies,—­for example, the Venetian envoys at his court,—­was not produced by a single stroke of Nature’s pencil, but had a three-fold origin.  In the education which, from his earliest years, had prepared him for the business of reigning, the alpha, and the omega of every lesson had been the word “dissimulation.” Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare.  By this maxim it was not intended—­at least, openly or cynically—­to impress on youthful royalty the duty and propriety of lying.  All it professed to inculcate was the necessity of wearing an habitual veil before the mind, through which no thought or feeling should ever be discernible.  Every politician, in the sixteenth century, had learned that lesson.  William of Orange, the best and purest statesman of the age, was the greatest of all masters in the art of dissimulation.  In vain might Granvelle strive to pry into that bosom, to learn whether its designs were friendly or hostile to the plans of tyranny.  Not till it was extorted by events could the secret be discovered.

In the second place, Philip, as a Spaniard, and one whose manners were to furnish a model for the Spanish court, had, of course, been trained to that demeanor which was regarded in Spain as the distinctive mark of high breeding.  “All the nobles of this court,” writes an Italian contemporary, “though amazingly ignorant and unlettered, maintain a certain haughty tranquillity of manner which they term sosiego.”  Foreigners found it difficult to define a quality which differed as much from the composure and self-possession everywhere characteristic of the gentleman as Spartan endurance or Stoical apathy from ordinary fortitude or self-control.  It was a glacier-like repose, incrusting a mountain of pride.  The beams, that gilded, might not thaw it; the storm did but harden and extend it.  It yielded only to the inner fires of arrogance and passion, bursting through, at times, with irrepressible fury.