And now—­in accordance with this program—­Philip proceeded stealthily and industriously to further the schemes of Mucio, to the exclusion of more urgent business.  Noiseless and secret himself, and delighting in clothing so much as to glide, as it were, throughout Europe, wrapped in the mantle of invisibility, he was perpetually provoked by the noise, the bombast, and the bustle, which his less prudent confederates permitted themselves.  While Philip for a long time hesitated to confide the secret of the League to Parma, whom it most imported to understand these schemes of his master, the confederates were openly boasting of the assistance which they were to derive from Parma’s cooperation.  Even when the Prince had at last been informed as to the state of affairs, he stoutly denied the facts of which the leaguers made their vaunt; thus giving to Mucio and his friends a lesson in dissimulation.”

“Things have now arrived at a point,” wrote Philip to Tassis, 15th March, 1585, “that this matter of the League cannot and ought not to be concealed from those who have a right to know it.  Therefore you must speak clearly to the Prince of Parma, informing him of the whole scheme, and enjoining the utmost secrecy.  You must concert with him as to the best means of rendering aid to this cause, after having apprised him of the points which regarded him, and also that of the security of Cardinal de Bourbon, in case of necessity.”

The Prince was anything but pleased, in the midst of his anxiety and his almost superhuman labour in the Antwerp siege, to be distracted, impoverished, and weakened, in order to carry out these schemes against France; but he kept the secret manfully.

To Malpierre, the French envoy in Brussels—­for there was the closest diplomatic communication between Henry iii. and Philip, while each was tampering with the rebellious subjects of the other—­to Malpierre Parma flatly contradicted all complicity on the part of the Spanish King or himself with the Holy League, of which he knew Philip to be the originator and the chief.

“If I complain to the Prince of Parma,” said the envoy, “of the companies going from Flanders to assist the League, he will make me no other reply than that which the President has done—­that there is nothing at all in it—­until they are fairly arrived in France.  The President (Richardot) said that if the Catholic King belonged to the League, as they insinuate, his Majesty would declare the fact openly.”

And a few days later, the Prince himself averred, as Malpierre had anticipated, that “as to any intention on the part of himself or his Catholic Majesty, to send succour to the League, according to the boast of these gentlemen, he had never thought of such a thing, nor had received any order on the subject from his master.  If the King intended to do anything of the kind, he would do it openly.  He protested that he had never seen anything, or known anything of the League.”