With regard to persons who had so richly deserved such chastisement, he recommended "that their heads should be taken off; but, until this could be done, that the King should dissemble with them." He advised Philip not to reply to their letters, but merely to intimate, through the Regent, that their reasons for the course proposed by them did not seem satisfactory.

He did not prescribe this treatment of the case as "a true remedy, but only as a palliative; because for the moment only weak medicines could be employed, from which, however, but small effect could be anticipated." As to recalling the Cardinal, "as they had the impudence to propose to his Majesty," the Duke most decidedly advised against the step.

In the mean time, and before it should be practicable to proceed "to that vigorous chastisement already indicated," he advised separating the nobles as much as possible by administering flattery and deceitful caresses to Egmont, who might be entrapped more easily than the others.
Here, at least, was a man who knew his own mind.

Here was a servant who could be relied upon to do his master's bidding whenever this master should require his help.

The vigorous explosion of wrath with which the Duke thus responded to the first symptoms of what he regarded as rebellion, gave a feeble intimation of the tone which he would assume when that movement should have reached a more advanced stage.