Yet such was the condition of Europe at that day.  A small, dull, elderly, imperfectly-educated, patient, plodding invalid, with white hair and protruding under jaw, and dreary visage, was sitting day after day; seldom speaking, never smiling, seven or eight hours out of every twenty-four, at a writing table covered with heaps of interminable despatches, in a cabinet far away beyond the seas and mountains, in the very heart of Spain.  A clerk or two, noiselessly opening and shutting the door, from time to time, fetching fresh bundles of letters and taking away others—­ all written and composed by secretaries or high functionaries—­and all to be scrawled over in the margin by the diligent old man in a big schoolboy’s hand and style—­if ever schoolboy, even in the sixteenth century, could write so illegibly or express himself so awkwardly; couriers in the court-yard arriving from or departing for the uttermost parts of earth-Asia, Africa America, Europe-to fetch and carry these interminable epistles which contained the irresponsible commands of this one individual, and were freighted with the doom and destiny of countless millions of the world’s inhabitants—­such was the system of government against which the Netherlands had protested and revolted.  It was a system under which their fields had been made desolate, their cities burned and pillaged, their men hanged, burned, drowned, or hacked to pieces; their women subjected to every outrage; and to put an end to which they had been devoting their treasure and their blood for nearly the length of one generation.  It was a system, too, which, among other results, had just brought about the death of the foremost statesman of Europe, and had nearly effected simultaneously the murder of the most eminent sovereign in the world.  The industrious Philip, safe and tranquil in the depths of the Escorial, saying his prayers three times a day with exemplary regularity, had just sent three bullets through the body of William the Silent at his dining-room door in Delft.  “Had it only been done two years earlier,” observed the patient old man, “much trouble might have been spared me; but ’tis better late than never.”  Sir Edward Stafford, English envoy in Paris, wrote to his government—­so soon as the news of the murder reached him—­that, according to his information out of the Spanish minister’s own house, “the same practice that had been executed upon the Prince of Orange, there were practisers more than two or three about to execute upon her Majesty, and that within two months.”  Without vouching for the absolute accuracy of this intelligence, he implored the Queen to be more upon her guard than ever.  “For there is no doubt,” said the envoy, “that she is a chief mark to shoot at; and seeing that there were men cunning enough to inchant a man and to encourage him to kill the Prince of Orange, in the midst of Holland, and that there was a knave found desperate enough to do it, we must think hereafter that anything may be done.  Therefore God preserve her Majesty.”