to conduct this more important arrangement.  The French monarch, somewhat imprudently imagining that the Prince was also a party to the plot, opened the whole subject to him without reserve.  He complained of the constantly increasing numbers of sectaries in his kingdom, and protested that his conscience would never be easy, nor his state secure until his realm should be delivered of “that accursed vermin.”  A civil revolution, under pretext of a religious reformation, was his constant apprehension, particularly since so many notable personages in the realm, and even princes of the blood, were already tainted with heresy.  Nevertheless, with the favor of heaven, and the assistance of his son and brother Philip, he hoped soon to be master of the rebels.  The King then proceeded, with cynical minuteness, to lay before his discreet companion the particulars of the royal plot, and the manner in which all heretics, whether high or humble, were to be discovered and massacred at the most convenient season.  For the furtherance of the scheme in the Netherlands, it was understood that the Spanish regiments would be exceedingly efficient.  The Prince, although horror-struck and indignant at the royal revelations, held his peace, and kept his countenance.  The King was not aware that, in opening this delicate negotiation to Alva’s colleague and Philip’s plenipotentiary, he had given a warning of inestimable value to the man who had been born to resist the machinations of Philip and of Alva.  William of Orange earned the surname of “the Silent,” from the manner in which he received these communications of Henry without revealing to the monarch, by word or look, the enormous blunder which he had committed.  His purpose was fixed from that hour.  A few days afterwards he obtained permission to visit the Netherlands, where he took measures to excite, with all his influence, the strongest and most general opposition to the continued presence of the Spanish troops, of which forces, touch against his will, he had been, in conjunction with Egmont, appointed chief.  He already felt, in his own language, that “an inquisition for the Netherlands had been, resolved upon more cruel than that of Spain; since it would need but to look askance at an image to be cast into the flames.”  Although having as yet no spark of religious sympathy for the reformers, he could not, he said, “but feel compassion for so many virtuous men and women thus devoted to massacre,” and he determined to save them if he could!’ At the departure of Philip he had received instructions, both patent and secret, for his guidance as stadholder of Holland, Friesland, and Utrecht.  He was ordered “most expressly to correct and extirpate the sects reprobated by our Holy Mother Church; to execute the edicts of his Imperial Majesty, renewed by the King, with absolute rigor.  He was to see that the judges carried out the edicts, without infraction, alteration, or moderation, since they were there to