Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

equally ferocious on the part of his master, was a
link between the two. Alva was the right hand of
Philip; he was his counsellor in all evil; and by the
sword of Alva it was that Philip shed those oceans
of blood in which he sought to drown
Protestantism. Here, in this chateau, the dark
sententious Spaniard met the crafty and eloquent
Italian woman. Catherine made a covered gallery
be constructed in it, that she might visit the duke
whenever it suited her without being observed.[3]
Their meetings were mostly nocturnal, but as no
one was admitted to them, the precise schemes
discussed at them, and the plots hatched, must,
unless the oaken walls shall speak out, remain
secrets till the dread Judgment-day, save in so far
as they may be guessed at from the events which
flowed from them, and which have found a place
on the page of history. It is certain from an
expression of Alva's, caught up by the young son
of the Queen of Navarre, the future Henry IV--
whose sprightliness had won for him a large place
in Catherine's affections, and whom she at times
permitted to go with her to the duke's apartments,
thinking the matters talked of there altogether
250