rough mother-wit of the people had already characterized and annihilated
the project, while dull formalists were carrying it through the
preliminary stages.

A vote in favor of the project having been obtained from the estates of
Artois, Hainault, and Flanders, the instructions for the envoys; Baron
Montigny and Marquis Berghen, were made out in conformity to the scheme.
Egmont had declined the mission, not having reason to congratulate
himself upon the diplomatic success of his visit to Spain in the
preceding year. The two nobles who consented to undertake the office
were persuaded into acceptance sorely against their will. They were
aware that their political conduct since the King's departure from the
country had not always been deemed satisfactory at Madrid, but they were,
of course, far from suspecting the true state of the royal mind. They
were both as sincere Catholics and as loyal gentlemen as Granvelle, but
they were not aware how continuously, during a long course of years, that
personage had represented them to Philip as renegades and rebels. They
had maintained the constitutional rights of the state, and they had
declined to act as executioners for the inquisition, but they were yet
to learn that such demonstrations amounted to high treason.

Montigny departed, on the 29th May, from Brussels. He left the bride to
whom he had been wedded amid scenes of festivity, the preceding autumn--
the unborn child who was never to behold its father's face. He received
warnings in Paris, by which he scorned to profit. The Spanish ambassador
in that city informed him that Philip's wrath at the recent transactions
in the Netherlands was high. He was most significantly requested, by a
leading personage in France, to feign illness, or to take refuge in any
expedient by which he might avoid the fulfilment of his mission. Such
hints had no effect in turning him from his course, and he proceeded to