ng, the king has finished his long
dispatch, and now hands it to the secretary. The latter, having vainly
struggled with his sleepiness, has at length begun to nod. Hearing his
name pronounced, he starts to his feet, takes the document, which is
not yet dry, to sand it, and, desirous to show by his alertness that he
has been all the time wide awake, empties over it--the contents of the
inkstand! Awkward individual!--there he stands, dumfounded and aghast.
His master quietly resumes his seat, procures fresh materials, and,
though it is long past midnight, begins his task anew with that
incomparable patience which is "his virtue."

The perfect equanimity on all occasions, which was the trait in
Philip's character that most impressed such of his contemporaries as
were neither his adherents nor his enemies,--for example, the Venetian
envoys at his court,--was not produced by a single stroke of Nature's
pencil, but had a three-fold origin. In the education which, from his
earliest years, had prepared him for the business of reigning, the
_alpha_, and the _omega_ of every lesson had been the word
"dissimulation." _Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare_. By this
maxim it was not intended--at least, openly or cynically--to impress on
youthful royalty the duty and propriety of lying. All it professed to
inculcate was the necessity of wearing an habitual veil before the
mind, through which no thought or feeling should ever be discernible.
Every politician, in the sixteenth century, had learned that lesson.
William of Orange, the best and purest statesman of the age, was the
greatest of all masters in the art of dissimulation. In vain might
Granvelle strive to pry into that bosom, to learn whether its designs
were friendly or hostile to the plans of tyranny. Not till it was
extorted by events could the secret be discovered.

In the second place, Philip, as a Spaniard, and one whose manners were
to furnish a model for the Spanish court, had, of course, been trained
to that demeanor which was regarded in Spain as the distinctive mark of
high breeding. "All the nobles of this court," writes an Italian
contemporary, "though amazingly ignorant and unlettered, maintain a
certain haughty tranquillity of manner which they term _sosiego_."
Foreigners found it difficult to define a quality which differed as
much from the composure and self-possession everywhere characteristic
of the gentleman as Spartan endurance or Stoical apathy from or