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Philip himself addressed a private letter to Granvelle, of course that others might see it, in which he affected to have just learned that the Cardinal had obtained permission from the Regent "to make a visit to his mother, in order to arrange certain family matters," and gravely gave his approbation to the step.
Granvelle and Madame de Parma both communicated this report upon the same day, but this was all that they were able to discover of the latent plot. In the autumn of this year Montigny made his visit to Spain, as confidential envoy from the Regent. The King being fully prepared as to the manner in which he was to deal with him, received the ambassador with great cordiality.
Granvelle attributed the Emperor's unexpectedly rapid convalescence and the fortunate change which had taken place in his gloomy mood to the favourable political news, and perhaps also to the music which, as a zealous patron of art, he himself loved.
Cardinal Granvelle, after fifteen years of semi-exile in Italy, had lately been summoned to Madrid to become chief adviser to the king. Granvelle spared no pains to impress upon Philip the necessity of getting rid of Orange as the chief obstacle to the pacification of the Netherlands, and advised that a price should be placed upon his life.
"Nothing," replied the Frieslander, "except what my friend Mathys told me lately. He said that before she lost her voice she was a perfect nightingale. She might recover it at Ems, and so the leech proposed to the Emperor to give her a sum of money for this purpose." "And his Majesty?" asked Granvelle.
Upon another occasion he observed, in a letter to Granvelle, that "all offices were sold to the highest bidder, and that the cause of Margaret's resentment against both the Cardinal and himself was, that they had so long prevented her from making the profit which she was now doing from the sale of benefices, offices, and other favors."
Cromwell, "not knowing how else to defend himself, contrived with presents and entreaties to obtain an audience of the king, whom he promised to make the richest sovereign that ever reigned in England." Chappuys to Granvelle: The Pilgrim, p. 107. In the name of God, Amen.
The show of this intimacy had lasted longer than its substance. Granvelle was the most politic of men, and the Prince had not served his apprenticeship at the court of Charles the Fifth to lay himself bare prematurely to the criticism or the animosity of the Cardinal with the recklessness of Horn and Egmont.
Cardinal Granvelle had ever whispered in the King's ear the expediency of taking off the Prince by assassination. It has been seen how subtly distilled, and how patiently hoarded, was this priest's venom against individuals, until the time arrived when he could administer the poison with effect. His hatred of Orange was intense and of ancient date.
The Pope never believed in it, Granvelle never believed in it, the Prince of Orange never believed in it, Councillor d'Assonleville never believed in it. "His Majesty," says the Walloon historian, who wrote from Assonleville's papers, "had many imperative reasons for not coming.
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