The Cardinal began at once to put into operation the system of deception, as to his departure, which had been planned by Philip. The man who had been ordered to leave the Netherlands by the King, and pushed into immediate compliance with the royal command by the Duchess, proceeded to address letters both to Philip and Margaret. He wrote from Namur to beg the Regent that she would not fail to implore his Majesty graciously to excuse his having absented himself for private reasons at that particular moment. He wrote to Philip from Besancon, stating that his desire to visit his mother, whom he had not seen for nineteen years, and his natal soil, to which he had been a stranger during the same period, had induced him to take advantage of his brother's journey to accompany him for a few days into Burgundy. He had, therefore, he said, obtained the necessary permission from the Duchess, who had kindly promised to write very particularly by the first courier, to beg his Majesty's approval of the liberty which they had both taken. He wrote from the same place to the Regent again, saying that some of the nobles pretended to have learned from Armenteros that the King had ordered the Cardinal to leave the country and not to return; all which, he added, was a very false Renardesque invention, at which he did nothing but laugh. As a matter of course, his brother, in whose company he was about to visit the mother whom he had not seen for the past nineteen years, was as much mystified as the rest of the world. Chantonnay was not aware that any thing but the alleged motives had occasioned the journey, nor did he know that his brother would perhaps have omitted to visit their common parent for nineteen years longer had he not received the royal order to leave the Netherlands.