luent
of tongue, fertile in expedients, courageous, resolute. He thoroughly
understood the art of managing men, particularly his superiors. He knew
how to govern under the appearance of obeying. He possessed exquisite
tact in appreciating the characters of those far above him in rank and
beneath him in intellect. He could accommodate himself with great
readiness to the idiosyncrasies of sovereigns. He was a chameleon to the
hand which fed him. In his intercourse with the King, he colored himself,
as it were, with the King's character. He was not himself, but Philip;
not the sullen, hesitating, confused Philip, however, but Philip endowed
with eloquence, readiness, facility. The King ever found himself
anticipated with the most delicate obsequiousness, beheld his struggling
ideas change into winged words without ceasing to be his own. No flattery
could be more adroit. The bishop accommodated himself to the King's
epistolary habits. The silver-tongued and ready debater substituted
protocols for conversation, in deference to a monarch who could not
speak. He corresponded with Philip, with Margaret of Parma, with every
one. He wrote folios to the Duchess when they were in the same palace. He
would write letters forty pages long to the King, and send off another
courier on the same day with two or three additional despatches of
identical date. Such prolixity enchanted the King, whose greediness for
business epistles was insatiable. The painstaking monarch toiled, pen in
hand, after his wonderful minister in vain. Philip was only fit to be the
bishop's clerk; yet he imagined himself to be the directing and governing
power. He scrawled apostilles in the margins to prove that he had read
with attention, and persuaded himself that he suggested when he scarcely
even comprehended. The bishop gave advice and issued instructions when he
seemed to be only receiving them. He was the substance while he affected
to be the shadow. These tactics were comparatively easy and likely to be
triumphant, so long as he had only to deal with inferior intellects like
those of Philip and Margaret. When he should be matched against political
genius and lofty character combined, it was possible that his resources
might not prove so all-sufficient.

His political principles were sharply defined in reality, but smoothed
over by a conventional and decorous benevolence of language, which
deceived vulgar minds. He was a strict absolutist. His deference to