Regent.  Have you made the report sufficiently circumstantial?

Machiavel.  Full and circumstantial, as the king loves to have it.  I relate how the rage of the iconoclasts first broke out at St. Omer.  How a furious multitude, with staves, hatchets, hammers, ladders, and cords, accompanied by a few armed men, first assailed the chapels, churches, and convents, drove out the worshippers, forced the barred gates, threw everything into confusion, tore down the altars, destroyed the statues of the saints, defaced the pictures, and dashed to atoms, and trampled under foot, whatever came in their way that was consecrated and holy.  How the crowd increased as it advanced, and how the inhabitants of Ypres opened their gates at its approach.  How, with incredible rapidity, they demolished the cathedral, and burned the library of the bishop.  How a vast multitude, possessed by the like frenzy, dispersed themselves through Menin, Comines, Verviers, Lille, nowhere encountered opposition; and how, through almost the whole of Flanders, in a single moment, the monstrous conspiracy declared itself, and was accomplished.

Regent.  Alas!  Your recital rends my heart anew; and the fear that the evil will wax greater and greater, adds to my grief.  Tell me your thoughts, Machiavel!

Machiavel.  Pardon me, your Highness, my thoughts will appear to you but as idle fancies; and though you always seem well satisfied with my services, you have seldom felt inclined to follow my advice.  How often have you said in jest:  “You see too far, Machiavel!  You should be an historian; he who acts, must provide for the exigence of the hour.”  And yet have I not predicted this terrible history?  Have I not foreseen it all?

Regent.  I too foresee many things, without being able to avert them.

Machiavel.  In one word, then:—–­you will not be able to suppress the new faith.  Let it be recognized, separate its votaries from the true believers, give them churches of their own, include them within the pale of social order, subject them to the restraints of law,—­do this, and you will at once tranquillize the insurgents.  All other measures will prove abortive, and you will depopulate the country.

Regent.  Have you forgotten with what aversion the mere suggestion of toleration was rejected by my brother?  Know you not, how in every letter he urgently recommends to me the maintenance of the true faith?  That he will not hear of tranquility and order being restored at the expense of religion?  Even in the provinces, does he not maintain spies, unknown to us, in order to ascertain who inclines to the new doctrines?  Has he not, to our astonishment, named to us this or that individual residing in our very neighbourhood, who, without its being known, was obnoxious to the charge of heresy?  Does he not enjoin harshness and severity? and am I to be lenient?  Am I to recommend for his adoption measures of indulgence and toleration?  Should I not thus lose all credit with him, and at once forfeit his confidence?