illustrious Duke has written to the King in praise of my obsequiousness; when I am censured here for so reverently cherishing him, it is a consolation that my services to the King and to the governor are not unappreciated there.”  Indeed the Duke of Alva, who had originally suspected the President’s character, seemed at last overcome by his indefatigable and cringing homage.  He wrote to the King, in whose good graces the learned Doctor was most anxious at that portentous period to maintain himself, that the President was very serviceable and diligent, and that he deserved to receive a crumb of comfort from the royal hand.  Philip, in consequence, wrote in one of his letters a few lines of vague compliment, which could be shown to Viglius, according to Alva’s suggestion.  It is, however, not a little characteristic of the Spanish court and of the Spanish monarch, that, on the very day before, he had sent to the Captain-General a few documents of very different import.  In order, as he said, that the Duke might be ignorant of nothing which related to the Netherlands, he forwarded to him copies of the letters written by Margaret of Parma from Brussels, three years before.  These letters, as it will be recollected, contained an account of the secret investigations which the Duchess had made as to the private character and opinions of Viglius—­at the very moment when he apparently stood highest in her confidence—­and charged him with heresy, swindling, and theft.  Thus the painstaking and time-serving President, with all his learning and experience, was successively the dupe of Margaret and of Alva, whom he so obsequiously courted, and always of Philip, whom he so feared and worshipped.

With his assistance, the list of blood-councillors was quickly completed.  No one who was offered the office refused it.  Noircarmes and Berlaymont accepted with very great eagerness.  Several presidents and councillors of the different provincial tribunals were appointed, but all the Netherlanders were men of straw.  Two Spaniards, Del Rio and Vargas, were the only members who could vote; while their decisions, as already stated, were subject to reversal by Alva.  Del Rio was a man without character or talent, a mere tool in the hands of his superiors, but Juan de Vargas was a terrible reality.

No better man could have been found in Europe for the post to which he was thus elevated.  To shed human blood was, in his opinion, the only important business and the only exhilarating pastime of life.  His youth had been stained with other crimes.  He had been obliged to retire from Spain, because of his violation of an orphan child to whom he was guardian, but, in his manhood, he found no pleasure but in murder.  He executed Alva’s bloody work with an industry which was almost superhuman, and with a merriment which would have shamed a demon.  His execrable jests ring through the blood and smoke and death-cries of those days of perpetual sacrifice.