to depart in peace.  In his own lofty language, he wished to be sprinkled on taking his leave “with the holy water of the court.”  Moreover, he was fond of his salary, although he disliked the sarcasms of the Duchess.  Egmont and others had advised him to abandon the office of President to Hopper, in order, as he was getting feeble, to reserve his whole strength for the state-council.  Viglius did not at all relish the proposition.  He said that by giving up the seals, and with them the rank and salary which they conferred, he should become a deposed saint.  He had no inclination, as long as he remained on the ground at all, to part with those emoluments and honors, and to be converted merely into the “ass of the state-council.”  He had, however, with the sagacity of an old navigator, already thrown out his anchor into the best holding-ground during the storms which he foresaw were soon to sweep the state.  Before the close of the year which now occupies, the learned doctor of laws had become a doctor of divinity also; and had already secured, by so doing, the wealthy prebend of Saint Bavon of Ghent.  This would be a consolation in the loss of secular dignities, and a recompence for the cold looks of the Duchess.  He did not scruple to ascribe the pointed dislike which Margaret manifested towards him to the awe in which she stood of his stern integrity of character.  The true reason why Armenteros and the Duchess disliked him was because, in his own words, “he was not of their mind with regard to lotteries, the sale of offices, advancement to abbeys, and many other things of the kind, by which they were in such a hurry to make their fortune.”  Upon another occasion he observed, in a letter to Granvelle, that “all offices were sold to the highest bidder, and that the cause of Margaret’s resentment against both the Cardinal and himself was, that they had so long prevented her from making the profit which she was now doing from the sale of benefices, offices, and other favors.”

The Duchess, on her part, characterized the proceedings and policy, both past and present, of the cardinalists as factious, corrupt, and selfish in the last degree.  She assured her brother that the simony, rapine, and dishonesty of Granvelle, Viglius, and all their followers, had brought affairs into the ruinous condition which was then but too apparent.  They were doing their best, she said, since the Cardinal’s departure, to show, by their sloth and opposition, that they were determined to allow nothing to prosper in his absence.  To quote her own vigorous expression to Philip—­“Viglius made her suffer the pains of hell.”  She described him as perpetually resisting the course of the administration, and she threw out dark suspicions, not only as to his honesty but his orthodoxy.  Philip lent a greedy ear to these scandalous hints concerning the late omnipotent minister and his friends.  It is an instructive lesson in human history to look through the cloud of dissimulation in which the actors