eir meaning than to
derogate in the least from the respect that was due to royalty. "If he
knew," he said, "that any individual among them had entertained such
disloyal thoughts be himself would challenge him to answer for it with
his life."

At his departure the monarch made him a present of fifty thousand
florins, and engaged, moreover, to furnish a portion for his daughter on
her marriage. He also consigned to his care the young Farnese of Parma,
whom, to gratify the regent, his mother, he was sending to Brussels.
The king's pretended mildness, and his professions of regard for the
Belgian nation, deceived the open-hearted Fleming. Happy in the idea of
being the bearer of so much felicity to his native country, when in fact
it was more remote than ever, he quitted Madrid satisfied beyond measure
to think of the joy with which the provinces would welcome the message
of their good king; but the opening of the royal answer in the council
of state at Brussels disappointed all these pleasing hopes. "Although
in regard to the religious edicts," this was its tenor, "his resolve was
firm and immovable, and he would rather lose a thousand lives than
consent to alter a single letter of it, still, moved by the
representations of Count Egmont, he was, on the other hand, equally
determined not to leave any gentle means untried to guard the people
against the delusions of heresy, and so to avert from them that
punishment which must otherwise infallibly overtake them. As he had now
learned from the count that the principal source of the existing errors
in the faith was in the moral depravity of the clergy, the bad
instruction and the neglected education of the young, he hereby
empowered the regent to appoint a special commission of three bishops,
and a convenient number of learned theologians, whose business it should
be to consult about the necessary reforms, in order that the people
might no longer be led astray through scandal, nor plunge into error
through ignorance. As, moreover, he had been informed that the public
executions of the heretics did but afford them an opportunity of
boastfully displaying a foolhardy courage, and of deluding the common
herd by an affectation of the glory of martyrdom, the commission was to
devise means for putting in force the final sentence of the Inquisition
with greater privacy, and thereby depriving condemned heretics of the
honor of their obduracy." In order, however, to provide against the