in the streets.  Berlaymont was treated by the Duchess with studied insult.  “What is the man talking about?” she would ask with languid superciliousness, if he attempted to express his opinion in the state-council.  Viglius, whom Berlaymont accused of doing his best, without success, to make his peace with the seigniors, was in even still greater disgrace than his fellow-cardinalists.  He longed, he said, to be in Burgundy, drinking Granvelle’s good wine.  His patience under the daily insults which he received from the government made him despicable in the eyes of his own party.  He was described by his friends as pusillanimous to an incredible extent, timid from excess of riches, afraid of his own shadow.  He was becoming exceedingly pathetic, expressing frequently a desire to depart and end his days in peace.  His faithful Hopper sustained and consoled him, but even Joachim could not soothe his sorrows when he reflected that after all the work performed by himself and colleagues, “they had only been beating the bush for others,” while their own share in the spoils had been withheld.  Nothing could well be more contumelious than Margaret’s treatment of the learned Frisian.  When other councillors were summoned to a session at three o’clock, the President was invited at four.  It was quite impossible for him to have an audience of the Duchess except in the presence of the inevitable Armenteras.  He was not allowed to open his mouth, even when he occasionally plucked up heart enough to attempt the utterance of his opinions.  His authority was completely dead.  Even if he essayed to combat the convocation of the states-general by the arguments which the Duchess, at his suggestion, had often used for the purpose, he was treated with the same indifference.  “The poor President,” wrote Granvelle to the King’s chief secretary, Gonzalo Perez, “is afraid, as I hear, to speak a word, and is made to write exactly what they tell him.”  At the same time the poor President, thus maltreated and mortified, had the vanity occasionally to imagine himself a bold and formidable personage.  The man whom his most intimate friends described as afraid of his own shadow, described himself to Granvelle as one who went his own gait, speaking his mind frankly upon every opportunity, and compelling people to fear him a little, even if they did not love him.  But the Cardinal knew better than to believe in this magnanimous picture of the doctor’s fancy.

Viglius was anxious to retire, but unwilling to have the appearance of being disgraced.  He felt instinctively, although deceived as to the actual facts, that his great patron had been defeated and banished.  He did not wish to be placed in the same position.  He was desirous, as he piously expressed himself, of withdrawing from the world, “that he might balance his accounts with the Lord, before leaving the lodgings of life.”  He was, however, disposed to please “the master” as well as the Lord.  He wished to have the royal permission