His firmness was allied to his piety.  His constancy in bearing the whole weight of struggle as unequal as men have ever undertaken, was the theme of admiration even to his enemies.  The rock in the ocean, “tranquil amid raging billows,” was the favorite emblem by which his friends expressed, their sense of his firmness.  From the time when, as a hostage in France, he first discovered the plan of Philip to plant the Inquisition in the Netherlands, up to the last moment of his life, he never faltered in his determination to resist that iniquitous scheme.  This resistance was the labor of his life.  To exclude the Inquisition; to maintain the ancient liberties of his country, was the task which he appointed to himself when a youth of three-and-twenty.  Never speaking a word concerning a heavenly mission, never deluding himself or others with the usual phraseology of enthusiasts, he accomplished the task, through danger, amid toils, and with sacrifices such as few men have ever been able to make on their country’s altar; for the disinterested benevolence of the man was as prominent as his fortitude.  A prince of high rank, and, with royal revenues, he stripped himself of station, wealth, almost at times of the common necessaries of life, and became, in his country’s cause, nearly a beggar as well as an outlaw.  Nor was he forced into his career by an accidental impulse from which there was no recovery.  Retreat was ever open to him.  Not only pardon but advancement was urged upon him again and again.  Officially and privately, directly and circuitously, his confiscated estates, together with indefinite and boundless favors in addition, were offered to him on every great occasion.  On the arrival of Don John, at the Breda negotiations, at the Cologne conferences, we have seen how calmly these offers were waved aside, as if their rejection was so simple that it hardly required many words for its signification, yet he had mortgaged his estates so deeply that his heirs hesitated at accepting their inheritance, for fear it should involve them in debt.  Ten years after his death, the account between his executors and his brother John amounted to one million four hundred thousand florins—­due to the Count, secured by various pledges of real and personal property; and it was finally settled upon this basis.  He was besides largely indebted to every one of his powerful relatives, so that the payment of the incumbrances upon his estate very nearly justified the fears of his children.  While on the one hand, therefore, he poured out these enormous sums like water, and firmly refused a hearing to the tempting offers of the royal government, upon the other hand he proved the disinterested nature of his services by declining, year after year, the sovereignty over the provinces; and by only accepting, in the last days of his life, when refusal had become almost impossible, the limited, constitutional supremacy over that portion of them which now makes the realm of his descendants.  He lived and died, not for himself, but for his country:  “God pity this poor people!” were his dying words.