rendered the unscrupulous Charles still more valuable proofs of devotion
and dexterity by the part he played in the memorable imprisonment of the
Landgrave of Hesse and the Saxon Dukes. He was thereafter constantly
employed in embassies and other offices of trust and profit.

There was no doubt as to his profound and varied learning, nor as to his
natural quickness and dexterity. He was ready witted, smooth and fluent
of tongue, fertile in expedients, courageous, resolute. He thoroughly
understood the art of managing men, particularly his superiors. He knew
how to govern under the appearance of obeying. He possessed exquisite
tact in appreciating the characters of those far above him in rank and
beneath him in intellect. He could accommodate himself with great
readiness to the idiosyncrasies of sovereigns. He was a chameleon to
the hand which fed him. In his intercourse with the King, he colored
himself, as it were, with the King's character. He was not himself, but
Philip; not the sullen, hesitating, confused Philip, however, but Philip
endowed with eloquence, readiness, facility. The King ever found himself
anticipated with the most delicate obsequiousness, beheld his struggling
ideas change into winged words without ceasing to be his own. No
flattery could be more adroit. The bishop accommodated himself to
the King's epistolary habits. The silver-tongued and ready debater
substituted protocols for conversation, in deference to a monarch who
could not speak. He corresponded with Philip, with Margaret of Parma,
with every one. He wrote folios to the Duchess when they were in the
same palace. He would write letters forty pages long to the King, and
send off another courier on the same day with two or three additional
despatches of identical date. Such prolixity enchanted the King, whose
greediness for business epistles was insatiable. The painstaking monarch
toiled, pen in hand, after his wonderful minister in vain. Philip was
only fit to be the bishop's clerk; yet he imagined himself to be the