Nearly all the members of the council gave in their adhesion, without comment, to the opinion of the king and the constable.  “But when it came to the turn of M. de Vieilleville, who had adopted the language of the Count of Nassau,” he unhesitatingly expressed a contrary opinion, unfolding all the reasons which the king had for being distrustful of the emperor and for not letting this chance of enfeebling him slip by.  “May it please your Majesty,” said he, “to remember his late passage through France, to obtain which the emperor submitted to carteblanche; nevertheless, when he was well out of the kingdom, he laughed at all his promises, and, when he found himself inside Cambrai, he said to the Prince of Infantado, ’Let not the King of France, if he be wise, put himself at my mercy, as I have been at his, for I swear by the living God that he shall not be quit for Burgundy and Champagne; but I would also insist upon Picardy and the key of the road to the Bastille of Paris, unless he were minded to lose his life or be confined in perpetual imprisonment until the whole of my wish were accomplished.’  Since thus it is, sir, and the emperor makes war upon you covertly, it must be made upon him overtly, without concealing one’s game or dissimulating at all.  No excuses must be allowed on the score of neediness, for France is inexhaustible, if only by voluntary loans raised on the most comfortable classes of the realm.  As for me, I consider myself one of the poorest of the company, or at any rate one of the least comfortable; but yet I have some fifteen thousand francs’ worth of plate, dinner and dessert, white and red [silver and gold], which I hereby offer to place in the hands of whomsoever you shall appoint, in order to contribute to the expenses of so laudable an enterprise as this.  Putting off, moreover, for the present the communication to you of a certain secret matter which one of the chiefs of this embassy hath told me; and I am certain that when you have discovered it, you will employ all your might and means to carry out that which I propose to you.”

The king asked Vieilleville what this secret matter was which he was keeping back.  “If it please your Majesty to withdraw apart, I will tell it you,” said Vieilleville.  All the council rose; and Vieilleville, approaching his Majesty, who called the constable only to his side, said, “Sir, you are well aware how the emperor got himself possessed of the imperial cities of Cambrai, Utrecht, and Liege, which he has incorporated with his own countship of Flanders, to the great detriment of the whole of Germany.  The electoral princes of the holy empire have discovered that he has a project in his mind of doing just the same with the imperial cities of Metz, Strasbourg, Toul, Verdun, and such other towns on the Rhine as he shall be able to get hold of.  They have secretly adopted the idea of throwing themselves upon your resources, without which they cannot stop this detestable design,