the distance.  His memorable and warning interview with Egmont has been described.  Since that period, although his spirit had always been manifesting itself in the capital like an actual presence; although he had been the magnet towards which the states throughout all their, oscillations had involuntarily vibrated, yet he had been ever invisible.  He had been summoned by the Blood Council to stand his trial, and had been condemned to death by default.  He answered the summons by a defiance, and the condemnation by two campaigns, unsuccessful in appearance, but which had in reality prostrated the authority of the sovereign.

Since that period, the representative of royalty had sued the condemned traitor for forgiveness.  The haughty brother of Philip had almost gone upon his knees, that the Prince might name his terms, and accept the proffered hand of majesty.

The Prince had refused, not from contumely, but from distrust.  He had spurned the supplications, as he had defied the proscription of the King.  There could be no friendship between the destroyer and the protector of a people.  Had the Prince desired only the reversal of his death-sentence, and the infinite aggrandizement of his family, we have seen how completely he had held these issues in his power.  Never had it been more easy, plausible, tempting, for a proscribed patriot to turn his back upon an almost sinking cause.  We have seen how his brave and subtle Batavian prototype, Civilis, dealt with the representative of Roman despotism.  The possible or impossible Netherland Republic of the first century of our era had been reluctantly abandoned, but the modern Civilis had justly more confidence in his people.

And now again the scene was changed.  The son of the Emperor, the King’s brother, was virtually beleaguered; the proscribed rebel had arrived at victory through a long series of defeats.  The nation everywhere acknowledged him master, and was in undisguised revolt against the anointed sovereign.  The great nobles, who hated Philip on the one hand, and the Reformed religion on the other, were obliged, in obedience to the dictates of a people with whom they had little sympathy, to accept the ascendency of the Calvinist Prince, of whom they were profoundly jealous.  Even the fleeting and incapable Aerschot was obliged to simulate adhesion; even the brave Champagny, cordial hater of Spaniards, but most devotedly Catholic, “the chiefest man of wysedome and stomach at that tyme in Brussels,” so envoy Wilson wrote to Burghley, had become “Brabantized,” as his brother Granvelle expressed himself, and was one of the commissioners to invite the great rebel to Brussels.  The other envoys were the Abbot of Saint Gertrude, Dr. Leoninus, and the Seigneur de Liesvelt.  These gentlemen, on arriving at Gertruydenberg, presented a brief but very important memorial to the Prince.  In that document they informed him that the states-general, knowing how efficacious would be his presence, by