Whatever the King commands I shall do, even were I to march into the fire, whatever happens, and without fear or respect for any person I mean to remain the same man to the end—­Durate;—­and I have a head that is hard enough when I do undertake any thing—­’nec animism despondeo’.”  Here, certainly, was significant foreshadowing of the general wrath to come, and it was therefore of less consequence that the portraits painted by him of Berghen, Horn, Montigny, and others, were so rarely relieved by the more flattering tints which he occasionally mingled with the sombre coloring of his other pictures.  Especially with regard to Count Egmont, his conduct was somewhat perplexing and, at first sight, almost inscrutable.  That nobleman had been most violent in opposition to his course, had drawn a dagger upon him, had frequently covered him with personal abuse, and had crowned his offensive conduct by the invention of the memorable fool’s-cap:  livery.  Yet the Cardinal usually spoke of him with pity and gentle consideration, described him as really well disposed in the main, as misled by others, as a “friend of smoke,” who might easily be gained by flattery and bribery.  When there was question of the Count’s going to Madrid, the Cardinal renewed his compliments with additional expression of eagerness that they should be communicated to their object.  Whence all this Christian meekness in the author of the Ban against Orange and the eulogist of Alva?  The true explanation of this endurance on the part of the Cardinal lies in the estimate which he had formed of Egmont’s character.  Granvelle had taken the man’s measure, and even he could not foresee the unparalleled cruelty and dulness which were eventually to characterize Philip’s conduct towards him.  On the contrary, there was every reason why the Cardinal should see in the Count a personage whom brilliant services, illustrious rank, and powerful connexions, had marked for a prosperous future.  It was even currently asserted that Philip was about to create him Governor-General of the Netherlands, in order to detach him entirely from Orange, and to bind him more closely to the Crown.  He was, therefore, a man to be forgiven.  Nothing apparently but a suspicion of heresy could damage the prospects of the great noble, and Egmont was orthodox beyond all peradventure.  He was even a bigot in the Catholic faith.  He had privately told the Duchess of Parma that he had always been desirous of seeing the edicts thoroughly enforced; and he denounced as enemies all those persons who charged him with ever having been in favor of mitigating the System.  He was reported, to be sure, at about the time of Granvelle’s departure from the Netherlands, to have said “post pocula, that the quarrel was not with the Cardinal, but with the King, who was administering the public affairs very badly, even in the matter of religion.”  Such a bravado, however, uttered by a gentleman in his cups, when flushed with a recent political triumph, could hardly