m the more, vouchsafed
him only a private audience in her own apartment.

Yet at this interview she showed more condescension than before, and
even went so far as to assure the duke that there was no one whose
appointment would have been more acceptable to her.[960] She followed
this, by bluntly demanding why he had been sent at all. Alva replied,
that, as she had often intimated her desire for a more efficient
military force, he had come to aid her in the execution of her measures,
and to restore peace to the country before the arrival of his
majesty.[961]--The answer could hardly have pleased the duchess, who
doubtless considered she had done that without his aid, already.

[Sidenote: MARGARET DISGUSTED.]

The discourse fell upon the mode of quartering the troops. Alva proposed
to introduce a Spanish garrison into Brussels. To this Margaret objected
with great energy. But the duke on this point was inflexible. Brussels
was the royal residence, and the quiet of the city could only be secured
by a garrison. "If people murmur," he concluded, "you can tell them I am
a headstrong man, bent on having my own way. I am willing to take all
the odium of the measure on myself."[962] Thus thwarted, and made to
feel her inferiority when any question of real power was involved,
Margaret felt the humiliation of her position even more keenly than
before. The appointment of Alva had been from the first, as we have
seen, a source of mortification to the duchess. In December, 1566, soon
after Philip had decided on sending the duke, with the authority of
captain-general, to the Low Countries, he announced it in a letter to
Margaret. He had been as much perplexed, he said, in the choice of a
commander, as she could have been; and it was only at her suggestion of
the necessity of some one to take the military command, that he had made
such a nomination. Alva was, however, only to prepare the way for him,
to assemble a force on the frontier, establish the garrisons, and
enforce discipline among the troops till he came.[963] Philip was
careful not to alarm his sister by any hint of the extraordinary powers
to be conferred on the duke, who thus seemed to be sent only in
obedience to her suggestion, and in subordination to her
authority.--Margaret knew too well that Alva was not a man to act in
subordination to any one. But whatever misgivings she may have had, she
hardly betrayed them in her reply to Philip, in the following February,
1567