was sweeping so rapidly through the provinces would soon be among them.  Symptoms of the dreaded visitation were already but too manifest.  What precaution should:  they take?  Should they issue a proclamation?  Such documents had been too common of late, and had lost their virtue.  It was the time not to assert but to exercise authority.  Should they summon the ward-masters, and order the instant arming and mustering of their respective companies?  Should they assemble the captains of the Military associations?  Nothing better could have been desired than such measures in cases of invasion or of ordinary tumult, but who should say how deeply the poison had sunk into the body politic; who should say with how much or how little alacrity the burgher militia would obey the mandates of the magistracy?  It would be better to issue no proclamation unless they could enforce its provisions; it would be better not to call out the citizen soldiery unless they were likely to prove obedient.  Should mercenary troops at this late hour be sent for?  Would not their appearance at this crisis rather inflame the rage than intimidate the insolence of the sectaries?  Never were magistrates in greater perplexity.  They knew not what course was likely to prove the safest, and in their anxiety to do nothing wrong, the senators did nothing at all.  After a long and anxious consultation, the honest burgomaster and his associates all went home to their beds, hoping that the threatening flame of civil tumult would die out of itself, or perhaps that their dreams would supply them with that wisdom which seemed denied to their waking hours.

In the morning, as it was known that no precaution had been taken, the audacity of the Reformers was naturally increased.  Within the cathedral a great crowd was at an early hour collected, whose savage looks and ragged appearance denoted that the day and night were not likely to pass away so peacefully as the last.  The same taunts and imprecations were hurled at the image of the Virgin; the same howling of the beggars’ cry resounded through the lofty arches.  For a few hours, no act of violence was committed, but the crowd increased.  A few trifles, drifting, as usual, before the event, seemed to indicate the approaching convulsion.  A very paltry old woman excited the image-breaking of Antwerp.  She had for years been accustomed to sit before the door of the cathedral with wax-tapers and wafers, earning scanty subsistence from the profits of her meagre trade, and by the small coins which she sometimes received in charity.  Some of the rabble began to chaffer with this ancient hucksteress.  They scoffed at her consecrated wares; they bandied with her ribald jests, of which her public position had furnished her with a supply; they assured her that the hour had come when her idolatrous traffic was to be forever terminated, when she and her patroness, Mary, were to be given over to destruction together.  The old woman, enraged, answered threat with threat, and