said Granvelle, mournfully, "that nobody
in Rome believes in his Majesty's journey to the provinces." From that
time forward, however, the King began to promise this visit, which was
held out as a panacea for every ill, and made to serve as an excuse for
constant delay.

It may well be supposed that if Philip's secret policy had been
thoroughly understood in the Netherlands, the outbreak would have come
sooner. On the receipt, however, of the public despatches from Madrid,
the administration in Brussels made great efforts to represent their
tenor as highly satisfactory. The papal inquisition was to be abolished,
a pardon was to be granted, a new moderation was to be arranged at some
indefinite period; what more would men have? Yet without seeing the face
of the cards, the people suspected the real truth, and Orange was
convinced of it. Viglius wrote that if the King did not make his intended
visit soon, he would come too late, and that every week more harm was
done by procrastination than could be repaired by months of labor and
perhaps by torrents of blood. What the precise process was, through which
Philip was to cure all disorders by his simple presence, the President
did not explain.

As for the measures propounded by the King after so long a delay, they
were of course worse than useless; for events had been marching while he
had been musing. The course suggested was, according to Viglius, but "a
plaster for a wound, but a drag-chain for the wheel." He urged that the
convocation of the states-general was the only remedy for the perils in
which the country was involved; unless the King should come in person. He
however expressed the hope that by general consultation some means would
be devised by which, if not a good, at least a less desperate aspect
would be given to public affairs, "so that the commonwealth, if fall it
must, might at least fall upon its feet like a cat, and break its legs
rather than its neck."

Notwithstanding this highly figurative view of the subject; and
notwithstanding the urgent representations of Duchess Margaret to her
brother, that nobles and people were all clamoring about the necessity of
convening the states general, Philip was true to his instincts on this as
on the other questions. He knew very well that the states-general of the
Netherlands and Spanish despotism were incompatible ideas, and he
recoiled from the idea of the assembly with infinite aversion. At the
same time a littl