His colleague in the mission, Marquis Berghen, had been prevented from setting forth at the same time, by an accident which, under the circumstances, might almost seem ominous.  Walking through the palace park, in a place where some gentlemen were playing at pall-mall, he was accidentally struck in the leg by a wooden ball.  The injury, although trifling, produced go much irritation and fever that he was confined to his bed for several weeks.  It was not until the 1st of July that he was able to take his departure from Brussels.  Both these unfortunate nobles thus went forth to fulfil that dark and mysterious destiny from which the veil of three centuries has but recently been removed.

Besides a long historical discourse, in eighteen chapters, delivered by way of instruction to the envoys, Margaret sent a courier beforehand with a variety of intelligence concerning the late events.  Alonzo del Canto, one of Philip’s spies in the Netherlands, also wrote to inform the King that the two ambassadors were the real authors of all the troubles then existing in the country.  Cardinal Granvelle, too, renewed his previous statements in a confidential communication to his Majesty, adding that no persons more appropriate could have been selected than Berghen and Montigny, for they knew better than any one else the state of affairs in which they had borne the principal part.  Nevertheless, Montigny, upon his arrival in Madrid on the 17th of June, was received by Philip with much apparent cordiality, admitted immediately to an audience, and assured in the strongest terms that there was no dissatisfaction in the royal mind against the seigniors, whatever false reports might be circulated to that effect.  In other respects, the result of this and of his succeeding interviews with the monarch was sufficiently meagre.

It could not well be otherwise.  The mission of the envoys was an elaborate farce to introduce a terrible tragedy.  They were sent to procure from Philip the abolition of the inquisition and the moderation of the edicts.  At the very moment, however, of all these legislative and diplomatic arrangements, Margaret of Parma was in possession of secret letters from Philip, which she was charged to deliver to the Archbishop of Sorrento, papal nuncio at the imperial court, then on a special visit to Brussels.  This ecclesiastic had come to the Netherlands ostensibly to confer with the Prince of Orange upon the affairs of his principality, to remonstrate with Count Culemburg, and to take measures for the reformation of the clergy.  The real object of his mission, however, was to devise means for strengthening the inquisition and suppressing heresy in the provinces.  Philip, at whose request he had come, had charged him by no means to divulge the secret, as the King was anxious to have it believed that the ostensible was the only business which the prelate had to perform in the country.  Margaret accordingly delivered to him the private letters, in which Philip avowed his determination to maintain the inquisition and the edicts in all their rigor, but enjoined profound secrecy upon the subject.  The Duchess, therefore, who knew the face of the cards, must have thought it a superfluous task to continue the game, which to Philip’s cruel but procrastinating temperament was perhaps a pleasurable excitement.