He gained, too, a considerable dole from Anne, who was overjoyed to see him again, and rejoiced at the diversion a visit to his laboratory afforded. He worked on her childish vanity with perfumes, soaps, lotions, cosmetics; and on her idle credulity, by foretelling the future by means of cards and mirrors; and with the ready wit and facile ability which were his stock in trade, he speedily became a favourite with the Princess, who was the only member of the household sufficiently idle to be able to afford him limitless time, patience, and encouragement; for Anne had no friends, and she was not interested in her second child who lived apart with nurses and maids. While William was becoming more and more absorbed in the task of defeating Granvelle and the policies he stood for, Anne was becoming more and more addicted to her fortune telling, her magic experiments, her wine drinking, and her bouts of fury, which rendered it almost impossible to find any one to wait on her. Only Rénèe le Meung remained at her task, patient, impassive, serving her mistress with as much devotion as if she loved her, concealing her faults as much as possible, and doing all in her power to make Anne preserve a reputable appearance before her world. It was a thankless, bitter task, but Rénèe performed it with as complete a self-abnegation as any anchorite his daily round of prayers and penances. Anne had drifted completely from her husband, the passionate affection she had once evinced for him never revived in one single moment of tenderness. His quarrel with Granvelle, which had closed the Regent's Court to her, his absorption in affairs in which she refused to take the slightest interest, and the neglect she fancied she had received from all in Brussels, had produced in Anne a bitter disappointment from which grew an equally bitter dislike of her husband whom she regarded as the author of these evils. But William, eminently generous, peace-loving, and used to domestic gentleness and serenity, made more than one attempt to restore amity; Anne's character bewildered and confused him. Soon after he had received the momentous news that Cardinal Granvelle had requested the Regent's permission to accompany his brother for a few days into Burgundy to visit their mother, and that Egmont's offer to go to Madrid and explain the affairs of the Provinces in person had been declined, and that the King's answer to the petitions of Orange, Egmont, and Hoorne to remove the Cardinal had been a dry and stiff note bidding the three once more take their places at the Regent's table, William summoned a meeting of all the grandees who had leagued with him against the Cardinal.