Even after they had exchanged salutations, he addressed several remarks to him in a half jesting, half biting tone, saying among other things, that his countship might have spared him the trouble of making this long journey in his old age.  There were other observations in a similar strain which might have well aroused the suspicion of any man not determined, like Egmont, to continue blind and deaf.  After a brief interval, however, Alva seems to have commanded himself.  He passed his arm lovingly over that stately neck, which he had already devoted to the block, and the Count having resolved beforehand to place himself, if possible, upon amicable terms with the new Viceroy—­the two rode along side by side in friendly conversation, followed by the regiment of infantry and three companies of light horse, which belonged to the Duke’s immediate command.  Alva, still attended by Egmont, rode soon afterwards through the Louvain gate into Brussels, where they separated for a season.  Lodgings had been taken for the Duke at the house of a certain Madame de Jasse, in the neighborhood of Egmont’s palace.  Leaving here the principal portion of his attendants, the Captain-General, without alighting, forthwith proceeded to the palace to pay his respects to the Duchess of Parma.

For three days the Regent had been deliberating with her council as to the propriety of declining any visit from the man whose presence she justly considered a disgrace and an insult to herself.  This being the reward of her eight years’ devotion to her brother’s commands; to be superseded by a subject, and one too who came to carry out a policy which she had urgently deprecated, it could hardly be expected of the Emperor’s daughter that she should graciously submit to the indignity, and receive her successor with a smiling countenance.  In consequence, however, of the submissive language with which the Duke had addressed her in his recent communications, offering with true Castilian but empty courtesy, to place his guards, his army, and himself at her feet, she had consented to receive his visit with or without his attendants.

On his appearance in the court-yard, a scene of violent altercation and almost of bloodshed took place between his body-guard and the archers of the Regent’s household, who were at last, with difficulty, persuaded to allow the mercenaries of the hated Captain-General to pass.  Presenting himself at three o’clock in the afternoon, after these not very satisfactory preliminaries, in the bedchamber of the Duchess, where it was her habit to grant confidential audiences, he met, as might easily be supposed, with a chilling reception:  The Duchess, standing motionless in the centre of the apartment, attended by Berlaymont, the Duke of Aerachot, and Count Egmont, acknowledged his salutations with calm severity.  Neither she nor any one of her attendants advanced a step to meet him.  The Duke took off his hat, but she, calmly recognizing his right as a Spanish grandee, insisted