were republished and the inquisitors encouraged. Moreover, in accordance
with Philip's suggestion, orders were now given that the heretics should
be executed at midnight in their dungeons, by binding their heads between
their knees, and then slowly suffocating them in tubs of water. Secret
drowning was substituted for public burning, in order that the heretic's
crown of vainglory, which was thought to console him in his agony, might
never be placed upon his head.

In the course of the summer, Magaret wrote to her brother that the
popular frenzy was becoming more and more intense. The people were
crying aloud, she said, that the Spanish inquisition, or a worse than
Spanish inquisition, had been established among them by means of bishops
and ecclesiastics. She urged Philip to cause the instructions for the
inquisitors to be revised. Egmont, she said, was vehement in expressing
his dissatisfaction at the discrepancy between Philip's language to him
by word of mouth and that of the royal despatches on the religious
question. The other seigniors were even more indignant.

While the popular commotion in the Netherlands was thus fearfully
increasing, another circumstance came to add to the prevailing
discontent. The celebrated interview between Catharine de Medici and
her daughter, the Queen of Spain, occurred in the middle of the month of
June, at Bayonne. The darkest suspicions as to the results to humanity
of the plots to be engendered in this famous conference between the
representatives of France and Spain were universally entertained. These
suspicions were most reasonable, but they were nevertheless mistaken.
The plan for a concerted action to exterminate the heretics in both
kingdoms had, as it was perfectly well known, been formed long before
this epoch. It was also no secret that the Queen Regent of France had
been desirous of meeting her son-in-law in order to confer with him upon