themselves upon the Grande Place in the centre of the city.  All this was at dawn of day.  The burghers, who looked forth from their houses, were astounded and perplexed by this movement at so unwonted an hour, and hastened to seize their weapons.  Egmont sent a detachment to take possession of the palace.  He was too late.  Colonel Van der Tympel, commandant of the city, had been beforehand with him, had got his troops under arms, and now secured the rebellious detachment.  Meantime, the alarm had spread.  Armed burghers came from every house, and barricades were hastily thrown up across every one of the narrow streets leading to the square.  Every issue was closed.  Not a man of Egmont’s adherents—­if he indeed had adherents among the townsmen —­dared to show his face.  The young traitor and his whole regiment, drawn up on the Grande Place, were completely entrapped.  He had not taken Brussels, but assuredly Brussels had taken him.  All day long he was kept in his self-elected prison and pillory, bursting with rage and shame.  His soldiers, who were without meat or drink, became insolent and uproarious, and he was doomed also to hear the bitter and well-merited taunts of the towns-people.  A thousand stinging gibes, suggested by his name and the locality, were mercilessly launched upon him.  He was asked if he came thither to seek his father’s head.  He was reminded that the morrow was the anniversary of that father’s murder upon that very spot—­ by those with whom the son would now make his treasonable peace.  He was bidden to tear up but a few stones from the pavement beneath his feet, that the hero’s blood might cry out against him from the very ground.

Tears of shame and fury sprang from the young man’s eyes as he listened to these biting sarcasms, but the night closed upon that memorable square, and still the Count was a prisoner.  Eleven years before, the summer stars had looked down upon a more dense array of armed men within that place.  The preparations for the pompous and dramatic execution, which on the morrow was to startle all Europe, had been carried out in the midst of a hushed and overawed population; and now, on the very anniversary of the midnight in which that scaffold had risen, should not the grand spectre of the victim have started from the grave to chide his traitorous son?

Thus for a whole day and night was the baffled conspirator compelled to remain in the ignominious position which he had selected for himself.  On the morning of the 5th of June he was permitted to depart, by a somewhat inexplicable indulgence, together with all his followers.  He rode out of the gate at early dawn, contemptible and crest-fallen, at the head of his regiment of traitors, and shortly afterwards—­pillaging and levying black mail as he went—­made his way to Montigny’s quarters.