Cleon, was never belabored more soundly by the wits of Athens, than the prelate by these Flemish “rhetoricians.”  With infinitely less Attic salt, but with as much heartiness as Aristophanes could have done, the popular rhymers gave the minister ample opportunity to understand the position which he occupied in the Netherlands.  One day a petitioner placed a paper in his hand and vanished.  It contained some scurrilous verses upon himself, together with a caricature of his person.  In this he was represented as a hen seated upon a pile of eggs, out of which he was hatching a brood of bishops.  Some of these were clipping the shell, some thrusting forth an arm, some a leg, while others were running about with mitres on their heads, all bearing whimsical resemblance to various prelates who had been newly-appointed.  Above the Cardinal’s head the Devil was represented hovering, with these words issuing from his mouth:  “This is my beloved Son, listen to him, my people.”

There was another lampoon of a similar nature, which was so well executed, that it especially excited Granvelle’s anger.  It was a rhymed satire of a general nature, like the rest, but so delicate and so stinging, that the Cardinal ascribed it to his old friend and present enemy, Simon Renard.  This man, a Burgundian by birth, and college associate of Granvelle, had been befriended both by himself and his father.  Aided by their patronage and his own abilities, he had arrived at distinguished posts; having been Spanish envoy both in France and England, and one of the negotiators of the truce of Vaucelles.  He had latterly been disappointed in his ambition to become a councillor of state, and had vowed vengeance upon the Cardinal, to whom he attributed his ill success.  He was certainly guilty of much ingratitude, for he had been under early obligations to the man in whose side he now became a perpetual thorn.  It must be confessed, on the other hand, that Granvelle repaid the enmity of his old associate with a malevolence equal to his own, and if Renard did not lose his head as well as his political station, it was not for want of sufficient insinuation on the part of the minister.  Especially did Granvelle denounce him to “the master” as the perverter of Egmont, while he usually described that nobleman himself, as weak, vain, “a friend of smoke,” easily misguided, but in the main well-intentioned and loyal.  At the same time, with all these vague commendations, he never omitted to supply the suspicious King with an account of every fact or every rumor to the Count’s discredit.  In the case of this particular satire, he informed Philip that he could swear it came from the pen of Renard, although, for the sake of deception, the rhetoric comedians had been employed.  He described the production as filled with “false, abominable, and infernal things,” and as treating not only himself, but the Pope and the whole ecclesiastical order with as much contumely as could be showed in