He affirmed that he was not allowed to request the expulsion of the assassin from the Count's house; but that he would take care, nevertheless, that neither this ruffian nor any other, should accomplish his purpose. A few weeks afterwards, expressing his joy at the contradiction of a report that Philip had himself been assassinated, Granvelle added; "I too, who am but a worm in comparison, am threatened on so many sides, that many must consider me already dead. Nevertheless, I will endeavor, with God's help, to live as long as I can, and if they kill me, I hope they will not gain every thing." Yet, with characteristic Jesuitism, the Cardinal could not refrain, even in the very letter in which he detailed the rebellious demonstrations of Berghen, and the murderous schemes of Horn, to protest that he did not say these things "to prejudice his Majesty against any one, but only that it might be known to what a height the impudence was rising." Certainly the King and the ecclesiastic, like the Roman soothsayers, would have laughed in each other's face, could they have met, over the hollowness of such demonstrations. Granvelle's letters were filled, for the greater part, with pictures of treason, stratagem, and bloody intentions, fabricated mostly out of reports, table-talk, disjointed chat in the careless freedom of domestic intercourse, while at the same time a margin was always left to express his own wounded sense of the injurious suspicions uttered against him by the various subjects of his letters. "God knows," said he to Perez, "that I always speak of them with respect, which is more than they do of me. But God forgive them all. In times like these, one must hold one's tongue. One must keep still, in order not to stir up a hornet's nest."