there had been
almost severity enough in the Netherlands for the present. The spectacle
of the public execution of another distinguished personage, it was
thought, might now prove more irritating than salutary. The King was of
this opinion himself. It certainly did not occur to him or to his
advisers that this consideration should lead them to spare the life of an
innocent man. The doubts entertained as to the expediency of a fresh
murder were not allowed to benefit the prisoner, who, besides being a
loyal subject and a communicant of the ancient Church, was also clothed
in the white robes of an envoy, claiming not only justice but
hospitality, as the deputy of Philip's sister, Margaret of Parma. These
considerations probably never occurred to the mind of His Majesty. In
view, however, of the peculiar circumstances of the case, it was
unanimously agreed that there should be no more blood publicly shed. Most
of the councillors were in favor of slow poison. Montigny's meat and
drink, they said, should be daily drugged, so that he might die by little
and little. Philip, however, terminated these disquisitions by deciding
that the ends of justice would not thus be sufficiently answered. The
prisoner, he had resolved, should be regularly executed, but the deed
should be secret, and it should be publicly announced that he had died of
a fever.

This point having been settled; the King now set about the arrangement of
his plan with all that close attention to detail which marked his
character. The patient industry which, had God given him a human heart
and a love of right, might have made him a useful monarch, he now devoted
to a scheme of midnight murder with a tranquil sense of enjoyment which
seems almost incredible. There is no exaggeration in calling the deed a
murder, for it certainly was not sanctioned by any law, divine or human,
nor justified or excused by any of the circumstances which are supposed
to palliate homicide. Nor, when the elaborate and superfluous luxury of
arrangements made by Philip for the accomplishment of his design is
considered, can it be doubted that he found a positive pleasure in his
task. It would almost seem that he had become jealous of Alva's
achievements in the work of slaughter. He appeared willing to prove to
those immediately about him, that however capable might be the Viceroy of
conducting public executions on a grand and terrifying scale, there was
yet a certain delicacy of finish neve