prosecute; that the seigniors meant to subvert entirely the authority of
the Sovereign; that they meant to put their King under tutelage, to
compel him to obey all their commands, to choose another prince of the
blood for their chief, to establish a republic by the aid of foreign
troops. If such insinuations, distilled thus secretly into the ear of
Philip, who, like his predecessor, Dionysius, took pleasure in listening
daily to charges against his subjects and to the groans of his prisoners,
were not likely to engender a dangerous gangrene in the royal mind, it
would be difficult to indicate any course which would produce such a
result. Yet the Cardinal maintained that he had never done the gentlemen
ill service, but that "they were angry with him for wishing to sustain
the authority of the master." In almost every letter he expressed vague
generalities of excuse, or even approbation, while he chronicled each
daily fact which occurred to their discredit. The facts he particularly
implored the King to keep to himself, the vague laudation he as urgently
requested him to repeat to those interested. Perpetually dropping small
innuendos like pebbles into the depths of his master's suspicious soul,
he knew that at last the waters of bitterness would overflow, but he
turned an ever-smiling face upon those who were to be his victims. There
was ever something in his irony like the bland request of the inquisitor
to the executioner that he would deal with his prisoners gently. There
was about the same result in regard to such a prayer to be expected from
Philip as from the hangman. Even if his criticisms had been uniformly
indulgent, the position of the nobles and leading citizens thus subjected
to a constant but secret superintendence, would have been too galling to
be tolerated. They did not know, so precisely as we have learned after
three centuries, that all their idle words and careless gestures as well
as their graver proceedings, were kept in a noting book to be pored over
and conned by rote in the recesses of the royal cabinet and the royal
mind; but they suspected the espionage of the Cardinal, and they openly