In fact, the main difference between the two institutions consisted in
the greater efficiency of the Spanish in discovering such of its victims
as were disposed to deny their faith. Devised originally for more
timorous and less conscientious infidels who were often disposed to skulk
in obscure places and to renounce without really abandoning their errors,
it was provided with a set of venomous familiars who glided through every
chamber and coiled themselves at every fireside. The secret details of
each household in the realm being therefore known to the holy office and
to the monarch, no infidel or heretic could escape discovery. This
invisible machinery was less requisite for the Netherlands. There was
comparatively little difficulty in ferreting out the "vermin"--to use the
expression of a Walloon historian of that age--so that it was only
necessary to maintain in good working order the apparatus for destroying
the noxious creatures when unearthed. The heretics of the provinces
assembled at each other's houses to practise those rites described in
such simple language by Baldwin Ogier, and denounced under such horrible
penalties by the edicts. The inquisitorial system of Spain was hardly
necessary for men who had but little prudence in concealing, and no
inclination to disavow their creed. "It is quite a laughable matter,"
wrote Granvelle, who occasionally took a comic view of the inquisition,
"that the King should send us depositions made in Spain by which we are
to hunt for heretics here, as if we did not know of thousands already.
Would that I had as many doubloons of annual income," he added, "as there
are public and professed heretics in the provinces." No doubt the
inquisition was in such eyes a most desirable establishment. "To speak
without passion," says the Walloon, "the inquisition well administered is
a laudable institution, and not less necessary than all the other offices
of spirituality and temporality belonging both to the bishops and to the
commissioners of the Roman see." The papal and episcopal establishments,