The building was, however, immediately commenced.  Many nobles and rich citizens contributed to the work; some making donations in money; others giving quantities of oaks, poplars, elms, and other timber trees, to be used in the construction.  The foundation of the first temple outside the Ports de Cocquerel was immediately laid.  Vast heaps of broken images and other ornaments of the desecrated churches were most unwisely used for this purpose, and the Catholics were exceedingly enraged at beholding those male and female saints, who had for centuries been placed in such “reverend and elevated positions,” fallen so low as to be the foundation-stones of temples whose builders denounced all those holy things as idols.

As the autumn began to wane, the people were clamorous for permission to have their preaching inside the city.  The new buildings could not be finished before the winter; but in the mean time the camp-meetings were becoming, in the stormy seasons fast approaching, a very inconvenient mode of worship.  On the other hand, the Duchess was furious at the proposition, and commanded Horn on no account to consent that the interior of Tournay should be profaned by these heretical rites.  It was in vain that the Admiral represented the justice of the claim, as these exercises had taken place in several of the city churches previously to the Accord of the 24th of August.

That agreement had been made by the Duchess only to be broken.  She had already received money and the permission to make levies, and was fast assuming a tone very different from the abject demeanor which had characterized her in August.  Count Horn had been used even as Egmont, Orange and Hoogstraaten had been employed, in order that their personal influence with the Reformers might be turned to account.  The tools and the work accomplished by them were to be thrown away at the most convenient opportunity.

The Admiral was placed in a most intolerable position.  An honest, common-place, sullen kind of man, he had come to a city full of heretics, to enforce concessions just made by the government to heresy.  He soon found himself watched, paltered with, suspected by the administration at Brussels.  Governor Moulbais in the citadel, who was nominally under his authority, refused obedience to his orders, was evidently receiving secret instructions from the Regent, and was determined to cannonade the city into submission at a very early day.  Horn required him to pledge himself that no fresh troops should enter the castle.  Moulbais swore he would make no such promise to a living soul.  The Admiral stormed with his usual violence, expressed his regret that his brother Montigny had so bad a lieutenant in the citadel, but could make no impression upon the determined veteran, who knew, better than Horn, the game which was preparing.  Small reinforcements were daily arriving at the castle; the soldiers of the garrison had been heard to boast “that they would soon carve and eat the townsmen’s flesh on their dressers,” and all the good effect from the Admiral’s proclamation on arriving, had completely vanished.