by Orange, but by Egmont, and he expressed his astonishment that Madame de Parma had not yet sent it to his Majesty.  The Duchess must have seen it, because her confessor had shown it to the person who was Granvelle’s informant.  In this letter, the Cardinal continued, the statement had been made by Egmont to the Prince of Orange that their plots were discovered, that the King was making armaments, that they were unable to resist him, and that therefore it had become necessary to dissemble and to accommodate themselves as well as possible to the present situation, while waiting for other circumstances under which to accomplish their designs.  Granvelle advised, moreover, that Straalen, who had been privy to the letter, and perhaps the amanuensis, should be forthwith arrested.

The Cardinal was determined not to let the matter sleep, notwithstanding his protestation of a kindly feeling towards the imprisoned Count.  Against the statement that he knew of a letter which amounted to a full confession of treason, out of Egmont’s own mouth—­a fact which, if proved, and perhaps, if even insinuated, would be sufficient with Philip to deprive Egmont of twenty thousand lives—­against these constant recommendations to his suspicious and sanguinary master, to ferret out this document, if it were possible, it must be confessed that the churchman’s vague and hypocritical expressions on the side of mercy were very little worth.

Certainly these seeds of suspicion did not fall upon a barren soil.  Philip immediately communicated the information thus received to the Duke of Alva, charging him on repeated occasions to find out what was written, either by Egmont or by Straalen, at Egmont’s instigation, stating that such a letter was written at the time of the Hoogstraaten baptism, that it would probably illustrate the opinions of Egmont at that period, and that the letter itself, which the confessor of Madame de Parma had once had in his hands, ought, if possible, to be procured.  Thus the very language used by Granvelle to Philip was immediately repeated by the monarch to his representative in the Netherlands, at the moment when all Egmont’s papers were in his possession, and when Egmont’s private secretary was undergoing the torture, in order that; secrets might be wrenched from him which had never entered his brain.  The fact that no such letter was found, that the Duchess had never alluded to any such document, and that neither a careful scrutiny of papers, nor the application of the rack, could elicit any satisfactory information on the subject, leads to the conclusion that no such treasonable paper had ever existed, save in the imagination of the Cardinal.  At any rate, it is no more than just to hesitate before affixing a damning character to a document, in the absence of any direct proof that there ever was such a document at all.  The confessor of Madame de Parma told another person, who told the Cardinal, that either Count Egmont, or Burgomaster Straalen,