his property, and his reputation, he did not hesitate to bend before the
"most illustrious Duke," as he always denominated him, with fulsome and
fawning homage. While he declined to dip his own fingers in the innocent
blood which was about to flow in torrents, he did not object to officiate
at the initiatory preliminaries of the great Netherland holocaust. His
decent and dainty demeanor seems even more offensive than the jocularity
of the real murderers. Conscious that no man knew the laws and customs of
the Netherlands better than himself, he had the humble effrontery to
observe that it was necessary for him at that moment silently to submit
his own unskilfulness to the superior judgment and knowledge of others.
Having at last been relieved from the stone of Sisyphus, which, as he
plaintively expressed himself, he had been rolling for twenty years;
having, by the arrival of Tisnacq, obtained his discharge as President of
the state council, he was yet not unwilling to retain the emoluments and
the rank of President of the privy council, although both offices had
become sinecures since the erection of the Council of Blood. Although his
life had been spent in administrative and judicial employments, he did
not blush upon a matter of constitutional law to defer to the authority
of such jurisconsults as the Duke of Alva and his two Spanish
bloodhounds, Vargas and Del Rio. He did not like, he observed, in his
confidential correspondence, to gainsay the Duke, when maintaining, that
in cases of treason, the privileges of Brabant were powerless, although
he mildly doubted whether the Brabantines would agree with the doctrine.
He often thought, he said, of remedies for restoring the prosperity of
the provinces, but in action he only assisted the Duke, to the best of
his abilities, in arranging the Blood-Council. He wished well to his
country, but he was more anxious for the favor of Alva. "I rejoice," said
he, in one of his letters, "that the most illustrious Duke has written to
the King in praise of my obsequiousness; when I am censured here for so
reverently cherishing him, it is a consolation that my services to the
King and to the governor are not unappreciated there." Indeed the Duke of
Alva, who had originally suspected the President's character, seemed at
last overcome by his indefatigable and cringing homage. He wrote to the
King, in whose good graces the learned Doctor was most anxious at that
portentous period to maintain