he Cardinal ascribed it to his old friend and present
enemy, Simon Renard. This man, a Burgundian by birth, and college
associate of Granvelle, had been befriended both by himself and his
father. Aided by their patronage and his own abilities, he had arrived at
distinguished posts; having been Spanish envoy both in France and
England, and one of the negotiators of the truce of Vaucelles. He had
latterly been disappointed in his ambition to become a councillor of
state, and had vowed vengeance upon the Cardinal, to whom he attributed
his ill success. He was certainly guilty of much ingratitude, for he had
been under early obligations to the man in whose side he now became a
perpetual thorn. It must be confessed, on the other hand, that Granvelle
repaid the enmity of his old associate with a malevolence equal to his
own, and if Renard did not lose his head as well as his political
station, it was not for want of sufficient insinuation on the part of the
minister. Especially did Granvelle denounce him to "the master" as the
perverter of Egmont, while he usually described that nobleman himself, as
weak, vain, "a friend of smoke," easily misguided, but in the main
well-intentioned and loyal. At the same time, with all these vague
commendations, he never omitted to supply the suspicious King with an
account of every fact or every rumor to the Count's discredit. In the
case of this particular satire, he informed Philip that he could swear it
came from the pen of Renard, although, for the sake of deception, the
rhetoric comedians had been employed. He described the production as
filled with "false, abominable, and infernal things," and as treating not
only himself, but the Pope and the whole ecclesiastical order with as
much contumely as could be showed in Germany. He then proceeded to
insinuate, in the subtle manner which was peculiarly his own, that Egmont
was a party to the publication of the pasquil. Renard visited at that
house, he said, and was received there on a much more intimate footing
than was becoming. Eight days before the satire was circulated, there had
been a conversation in Egmont's house, of a nature exactly similar to the
substance of the pamphlet. The man, in whose hands it was first seen,
continued Granvelle, was a sword cutler, a godson of the Count. This
person said that he had torn it from the gate of the city hall, but God
grant, prayed the Cardinal, that it was not he who had first posted it up
there. '