Of all the conspicuous men in the land, he was the only one whose worst enemy had never hinted through the whole course of his public career, that his hands had known contamination.  His honor was ever untarnished by even a breath of suspicion.  The Cardinal could accuse him of pecuniary embarrassment, by which a large proportion of his revenues were necessarily diverted to the liquidation of his debts, but he could not suggest that the Prince had ever freed himself from difficulties by plunging his hands into the public treasury, when it might easily have been opened to him.

It was soon, however, sufficiently obvious that as desperate a struggle was to be made with the many-headed monster of general corruption as with the Cardinal by whom it had been so long fed and governed.  The Prince was accused of ambition and intrigue.  It was said that he was determined to concentrate all the powers of government in the state council, which was thus to become an omnipotent and irresponsible senate, while the King would be reduced to the condition of a Venetian Doge.  It was, of course, suggested that it was the aim of Orange to govern the new Tribunal of Ten.  No doubt the Prince was ambitious.  Birth, wealth, genius, and virtue could not have been bestowed in such eminent degree on any man without carrying with them the determination to assert their value.  It was not his wish so much as it was the necessary law of his being to impress himself upon his age and to rule his fellow-men.  But he practised no arts to arrive at the supremacy which he felt must always belong to him, what ever might be his nominal position in the political hierarchy.  He was already, although but just turned of thirty years, vastly changed from the brilliant and careless grandee, as he stood at the hour of the imperial abdication.  He was becoming careworn in face, thin of figure, sleepless of habit.  The wrongs of which he was the daily witness, the absolutism, the cruelty, the rottenness of the government, had marked his face with premature furrows.  “They say that the Prince is very sad,” wrote Morillon to Granvelle; “and ’tis easy to read as much in his face.  They say he can not sleep.”  Truly might the monarch have taken warning that here was a man who was dangerous, and who thought too much.  “Sleekheaded men, and such as slept o’ nights,” would have been more eligible functionaries, no doubt, in the royal estimation, but, for a brief period, the King was content to use, to watch, and to suspect the man who was one day to be his great and invincible antagonist.  He continued assiduous at the council, and he did his best, by entertaining nobles and citizens at his hospitable mansion, to cultivate good relations with large numbers of his countrymen.  He soon, however, had become disgusted with the court.  Egmont was more lenient to the foul practices which prevailed there, and took almost a childish pleasure in dining at the table of the Duchess, dressed, as were many of the younger nobles, in short camlet doublet with the wheat-sheaf buttons.