much interest in looking out husbands for them.  The King spoke to him, as hardly could be avoided, of the famous fool’s-cap livery.  The Count laughed the matter off as a jest, protesting that it was a mere foolish freak, originating at the wine-table, and asseverating, with warmth, that nothing disrespectful or disloyal to his Majesty had been contemplated upon that or upon any other occasion.  Had a single gentleman uttered an undutiful word against the King, Egmont vowed he would have stabbed him through and through upon the spot, had he been his own brother.  These warm protestations were answered by a gentle reprimand as to the past by Philip, and with a firm caution as to the future.  “Let it be discontinued entirely, Count,” said the King, as the two were driving together in the royal carriage.  Egmont expressed himself in handsome terms concerning the Cardinal, in return for the wholesale approbation quoted to him in regard to his own character, from the private letters of that sagacious personage to his Majesty.  Certainly, after all this, the Count might suppose the affair of the livery forgiven.  Thus amicably passed the hours of that mission, the preliminaries for which had called forth so much eloquence from the Prince of Orange and so nearly carried off with apoplexy the President Viglius.  On his departure Egmont received a letter of instructions from Philip as to the report which he was to make upon his arrival in Brussels, to the Duchess.  After many things personally flattering to himself, the envoy was directed to represent the King as overwhelmed with incredible grief at hearing the progress made by the heretics, but as immutably determined to permit no change of religion within his dominions, even were he to die a thousand deaths in consequence.  The King, he was to state, requested the Duchess forthwith to assemble an extraordinary session of the council, at which certain bishops, theological doctors, and very orthodox lawyers, were to assist, in which, under pretence of discussing the Council of Trent matter, it was to be considered whether there could not be some new way devised for executing heretics; not indeed one by which any deduction should be made from their sufferings (which certainly was not the royal wish, nor likely to be grateful to God or salutary to religion), but by which all hopes of glory—­that powerful incentive to their impiety—­might be precluded.  With regard to any suggested alterations in the council of state, or in the other two councils, the King was to be represented as unwilling to form any decision until he should hear, at length, from the Duchess Regent upon the subject.