mieulx, en cas que Sadicte Majeste ne le veuille
dilaier jusques a la, et des a present persiste sur cette inquisition et
execution, qu'elle commisse quelque autre en ma place, mieulx entendant
les humeurs du peuple, et plus habile que moi a les maintenir en paix et
repos, plustost que d'encourir la note dont moi et les miens porrions
estre souilles, si quelque inconvenient advint au pays de mon
gouvernement, et durant ma charge." Ibid., ubi supra.

[696] "Addidere aliqui, nolle se in id operam conferre, ut quinquaginta
aut sexaginta hominum millia, se Provincias administrantibus, igni
concrementur." Strada, De Bello Belgico, tom. I. p. 203.

[697] Correspondance de Guillaume le Taciturne, tom. II. p. 112.

[698] Correspondance de Philippe II., tom. I. p. 378.

[699] Archives de la Maison d'Orange-Nassau, tom. II. p. 33.

[700] "A ce propos le duc d'Albe repondit que dix mille grenouilles ne
valoient pas la tete d'un saumon." Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, tom.
XVIII. p. 447.

Davila, in telling the same story, reports the saying of the duke in
somewhat different words:--"Diceva che ... besognava pescare i pesci
grossi, e non si curare di prendere le ranocchie." Guerre Civili di
Francia, (Milano, 1807,) tom. I. p. 341.

[701] Henry the Fourth, when a boy of eleven years of age, was in the
train of Catherine, and was present at one of her interviews with Alva.
It is said that he overheard the words of the duke quoted in the text,
and that they sank deep into the mind of the future champion of
Protestantism. Henry reported them to his mother, Jeanne d'Albret, by
whom they were soon made public. Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, tom.
XVIII. p. 447.--For the preceding paragraph see also De Thou, Hist.
Universelle, tom. V. p. 34 et seq.--Cabrera, Filipe Segundo, lib. VI.
cap. 23.--Brantome, OEuvres, tom. V. p. 58 et seq.

[702] It is a common opinion that, at the meeting at Bayonne, it was
arranged between the queen-mother and Alva to revive the tragedy of the
Sicilian Vespers in the horrid massacre of St. Bartholomew. I find,
however, no warrant for such an opinion in the letters of either the
duke or Don Juan Manrique de Lara, major-domo to Queen Isabella, the
originals of which are still preserved in the Royal Library at Paris. In
my copy of these MSS. the letters of Alva to Philip the Second cover
much the larger space. They are very minute in their account of his
conversation with the queen-mother. His great object