e wholesome deception could do no harm. He wrote to the
Duchess, therefore, that he was determined never to allow the
states-general to be convened. He forbade her to consent to the step
under any circumstances, but ordered her to keep his prohibition a
profound secret. He wished, he said, the people to think that it was only
for the moment that the convocation was forbidden, and that the Duchess
was expecting to receive the necessary permission at another time. It was
his desire, he distinctly stated, that the people should not despair of
obtaining the assembly, but he was resolved never to consent to the step,
for he knew very well what was meant by a meeting of the States-general.
Certainly after so ingenuous but secret a declaration from the disciple
of Macchiavelli, Margaret might well consider the arguments to be used
afterward by herself and others, in favor of the ardently desired
measure, as quite superfluous.

Such then was the policy secretly resolved upon by Philip; even before he
heard of the startling events which were afterwards to break upon him. He
would maintain the inquisition and the edicts; he would exterminate the
heretics, even if he lost all his realms and his own life in the cause;
he would never hear of the national representatives coming together. What
then were likely to be his emotions when he should be told of twenty
thousand armed heretics assembling at one spot, and fifteen thousand at
another, in almost every town in every province, to practice their
blasphemous rites; when he should be told of the whirlwind which had
swept all the ecclesiastical accumulations of ages out of existence; when
he should read Margaret's despairing letters, in which she acknowledged
that she had at last committed an act unworthy of God, of her King, and
of herself, in permitting liberty of worship to the renegades from the
ancient church!

The account given by the Duchess was in truth very dismal. She said that
grief consumed her soul and crimson suffused her cheeks while she related
the recent transactions. She took God to witness that she had resisted
long, that she had past many sleepless nights, that she had been wasted
with fever and grief. After this penitential preface she confessed that,
being a prisoner and almost besieged in her palace, sick in body and
soul, she had promised pardon and security to the confederates, with
liberty of holding assemblies to heretics in places where the practice
had alr