This petition was carried with considerable solemnity by Champagny, attended by many of his confederates, to the Hotel-de Ville, and presented to the magistracy of Brussels.  These functionaries were requested to deliver it forthwith to the Archduke and Council.  The magistrates demurred.  A discussion ensued, which grew warmer and warmer as it proceeded.  The younger nobles permitted themselves abusive language, which the civic dignitaries would not brook.  The session was dissolved, and the magistrates, still followed by the petitioners, came forth into the street.  The confederates, more inflamed than ever, continued to vociferate and to threaten.  A crowd soon collected in the square.  The citizens were naturally curious to know why their senators were thus browbeaten and insulted by a party of insolent young Catholic nobles.  The old politician at their head, who, in spite of many services, was not considered a friend to the nation, inspired them with distrust.  Being informed of the presentation of the petition, the multitude loudly demanded that the document should be read.  This was immediately done.  The general drift of the remonstrance was anything but acceptable, but the allusion to Paris, at the close, excited a tempest of indignation.  “Paris!  Paris!  Saint Bartholomew!  Saint Bartholomew!  Are we to have Paris weddings in Brussels also?” howled the mob, as is often the case, extracting but a single idea, and that a wrong one; from the public lecture which had just been made.  “Are we to have a Paris massacre, a Paris blood-bath here in the Netherland capital?  God forbid!  God forbid!  Away with the conspirators!  Down with the Papists!”

It was easily represented to the inflamed imaginations of the populace that a Brussels Saint Bartholomew had been organized, and that Champagny, who stood there before them, was its originator and manager.  The ungrateful Netherlanders forgot the heroism with which the old soldier had arranged the defence of Antwerp against the “Spanish Fury” but two years before.  They heard only the instigations of his enemies; they remembered only that he was the hated Granvelle’s brother; they believed only that there was a plot by which, in some utterly incomprehensible manner, they were all to be immediately engaged in cutting each others throats and throwing each other out of the windows, as had been done half a dozen years before in Paris.  Such was the mischievous intention ascribed to a petition, which Champagny and his friends had as much right to offer—­however narrow and mistaken their, opinions might now be considered—­as had the, synod of Dort to present their remonstrances.  Never was a more malignant or more stupid perversion of a simple and not very alarming phrase.  No allusion had been made to Saint Bartholomew, but all its horrors were supposed to be concealed in the sentence which referred to Paris.  The nobles were arrested on the spot and hurried to prison, with the exception