narrative was a good specimen of the masterly style of inuendo in which the Cardinal excelled, and by which he was often enabled to convince his master of the truth of certain statements while affecting to discredit them.  He had heard a story, he said, which he felt bound to communicate to his Majesty, although he did not himself implicitly believe it.  He felt himself the more bound to speak upon the subject because it tallied exactly with intelligence which he had received from another source.  The story was that one of these seigniors (the Cardinal did not know which, for he had not yet thought proper to investigate the matter) had said that rather than consent that the King should act in this matter of the bishoprics against the privileges of Brabant, the nobles would elect for their sovereign some other prince of the blood.  This, said the Cardinal, was perhaps a fantasy rather than an actual determination.  Count Egmont, to be sure, he said, was constantly exchanging letters with the King of Bohemia (Maximilian), and it was supposed, therefore, that he was the prince of the blood who was to be elected to govern the provinces.  It was determined that he should be chosen King of the Romans, by fair means or by force, that he should assemble an army to attack the Netherlands, that a corresponding movement should be made within the states, and that the people should be made to rise, by giving them the reins in the matter of religion.  The Cardinal, after recounting all the particulars of this fiction with great minuteness, added, with apparent frankness, that the correspondence between Egmont and Maximilian did not astonish him, because there had been much intimacy between them in the time of the late Emperor.  He did not feel convinced, therefore, from the frequency of the letters exchanged, that there was a scheme to raise an army to attack the provinces and to have him elected by force.  On the contrary, Maximilian could never accomplish such a scheme without the assistance of his imperial father the Emperor, whom Granvelle was convinced would rather die than be mixed up with such villany against Philip.  Moreover, unless the people should become still more corrupted by the bad counsels constantly given them, the Cardinal did not believe that any of the great nobles had the power to dispose in this way of the provinces at their pleasure.  Therefore, he concluded that the story was to be rejected as improbable, although it had come to him directly from the house of the said Count Egmont.  It is remarkable that, at the commencement of his narrative, the Cardinal had expressed his ignorance of the name of the seignior who was hatching all this treason, while at the end of it he gave a local habitation to the plot in the palace of Egmont.  It is also quite characteristic that he should add that, after all, he considered that nobleman one of the most honest of all, if appearances did not deceive.

It may be supposed, however, that all these details of a plot which was quite imaginary, were likely to produce more effect upon a mind so narrow and so suspicious as that of Philip, than could the vague assertions of the Cardinal, that in spite of all, he would dare be sworn that he thought the Count honest, and that men should be what they seemed.