according to custom, invited, and the Governor was graciously pleased to honor the solemnity with his presence.  Great was the joy of the multitude when Don John, complying with the habit of imperial and princely personages in former days, enrolled himself, cross-bow in hand, among the competitors.  Greater still was the enthusiasm, when the conqueror of Lepanto brought down the bird, and was proclaimed king of the year, amid the tumultuous hilarity of the crowd.  According to custom, the captains of the guild suspended a golden popinjay around the neck of his Highness, and placing themselves in procession, followed him to the great church.  Thence, after the customary religious exercises, the multitude proceeded to the banquet, where the health of the new king of the cross-bowmen was pledged in deep potations.  Long and loud was the merriment of this initiatory festival, to which many feasts succeeded during those brief but halcyon days, for the good-natured Netherlanders already believed in the blessed advent of peace.  They did not dream that the war, which had been consuming the marrow of their commonwealth for ten flaming years, was but in its infancy, and that neither they nor their children were destined to see its close.

For the moment, however, all was hilarity at Louvain.  The Governor, by his engaging deportment, awoke many reminiscences of the once popular Emperor.  He expressed unbounded affection for the commonwealth, and perfect confidence in the loyalty of the inhabitants.  He promised to maintain their liberties, and to restore their prosperity.  Moreover, he had just hit the popinjay with a skill which his imperial father might have envied, and presided at burgher banquets with a grace which Charles could have hardly matched.  His personal graces, for the moment, took the rank of virtues.  “Such were the beauty and vivacity of his eyes,” says his privy councillor, Tassis, “that with a single glance he made all hearts his own,” yet, nevertheless, the predestined victim secretly felt himself the object of a marksman who had no time for painted popinjays, but who rarely missed his aim.  “The whole country is at the devotion of the Prince, and nearly every one of its inhabitants;” such was his secret language to his royal brother, at the very moment of the exuberant manifestations which preceded his own entrance to Brussels.

While the Governor still tarried at Louvain, his secretary, Escovedo, was busily engaged in arranging the departure of the Spaniards, for, notwithstanding his original reluctance and the suspicions of Orange, Don John loyally intended to keep his promise.  He even advanced twenty-seven thousand florins towards the expense of their removal, but to raise the whole amount required for transportation and arrears, was a difficult matter.  The estates were slow in providing the one hundred and fifty thousand florins which they had stipulated to furnish.  The King’s credit, moreover, was at a very low, ebb.  His