put to torture and death by this barbarian, under circumstances of great atrocity.  The horrid deed cost the Prince many tears, aroused the indignation of the estates of Holland, and produced the dismission of the perpetrator from their service.  It was considered expedient, however, in view of his past services, his powerful connexions, and his troublesome character, that he should be induced peaceably to leave the country.

It was long before the Prince and the estates could succeed in ridding themselves of this encumbrance.  He created several riots in different parts of the province, and boasted, that he had many fine ships of war and three thousand men devoted to him, by whose assistance he could make the estates “dance after his pipe.”  At the beginning of the following year (1574), he was at last compelled to leave the provinces, which he never again troubled with his presence.  Some years afterwards, he died of the bite of a mad dog; an end not inappropriate to a man of so rabid a disposition.

While the Prince was thus steadily striving for a lofty and generous purpose, he was, of course, represented by his implacable enemies as a man playing a game which, unfortunately for himself, was a losing one.  “That poor prince,” said Granvelle, “has been ill advised.  I doubt now whether he will ever be able to make his peace, and I think we shall rather try to get rid of him and his brother as if they were Turks.  The marriage with the daughter of Maurice, ‘unde mala et quia ipse talis’, and his brothers have done him much harm.  So have Schwendi and German intimacies.  I saw it all very plainly, but he did not choose to believe me.”

Ill-starred, worse counselled William of Orange!  Had he but taken the friendly Cardinal’s advice, kept his hand from German marriages and his feet from conventicles—­had he assisted his sovereign in burning heretics and hunting rebels, it would not then have become necessary “to treat him like a Turk.”  This is unquestionable.  It is equally so that there would have been one great lamp the less in that strait and difficult pathway which leads to the temple of true glory.

The main reliance of Orange was upon the secret negotiations which his brother Louis was then renewing with the French government.  The Prince had felt an almost insurmountable repugnance towards entertaining any relation with that blood-stained court, since the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.  But a new face had recently been put upon that transaction.  Instead of glorying, in their crime, the King and his mother now assumed a tone of compunction, and averred that the deed had been unpremeditated; that it had been the result of a panic or an ecstasy of fear inspired by the suddenly discovered designs of the Huguenots; and that, in the instinct of self-preservation, the King, with his family and immediate friends, had plunged into a crime which they now bitterly lamented.  The French envoys at the different courts of Europe were directed to