They agreed to this proposal, and opened their gates for my admission.  I then entered the city with the principal persons of my company, and the grand master of the Bishop’s household.  This reverend personage, who was eighty years of age, and wore a beard as white as snow, which reached down to his girdle,—­this venerable old man, I say, was no sooner recognized by the drunken and armed rabble than he was accosted with the grossest abuse, and it was with difficulty they were restrained from laying violent hands upon him.  At length I got him into my lodgings, but the mob fired at the house, the walls of which were only of plaster.  Upon being thus attacked, I inquired for the master of the house, who, fortunately, was within.  I entreated him to speak from the window, to some one without, to obtain permission for my being heard.  I had some difficulty to get him to venture doing so.  At length, after much bawling from the window, the burghermasters came to speak to me, but were so drunk that they scarcely knew what they said.  I explained to them that I was entirely ignorant that the grand master of the Bishop’s household was a person to whom they had a dislike, and I begged them to consider the consequences of giving offence to a person like me, who was a friend of the principal lords of the States, and I assured them that the Comte de Lalain, in particular, would be greatly displeased when he should hear how I had been received there.

The name of the Comte de Lalain produced an instant effect, much more than if I had mentioned all the sovereign princes I was related to.  The principal person amongst them asked me, with some hesitation and stammering, if I was really a particular friend of the Count’s.  Perceiving that to claim kindred with the Count would do me more service than being related to all the Powers in Christendom, I answered that I was both a friend and a relation.  They then made me many apologies and conges, stretching forth their hands in token of friendship; in short, they now behaved with as much civility as before with rudeness.  They begged my pardon for what had happened, and promised that the good old man, the grand master of the Bishop’s household, should be no more insulted, but be suffered to leave the city quietly, the next morning, with me.

As soon as morning came, and while I was preparing to go to hear mass, there arrived the King’s agent to Don John, named Du Bois, a man much attached to the Spanish interest.  He informed me that he had received orders from the King my brother to conduct me in safety on my return.  He said that he had prevailed on Don John to permit Barlemont to escort me to Namur with a troop of cavalry, and begged me to obtain leave of the citizens to admit Barlemont and his troop to enter the town, that they might receive my orders.