That venerable ecclesiastical city; pleasantly seated amid gardens, orchards, and green pastures, watered, by the winding Scheld, was well fortified after the old manner, but it was especially defended and dominated by a splendid pentagonal citadel built by Charles V. It was filled with fine churches, among which the magnificent cathedral was pre-eminent, and with many other stately edifices.  The population was thrifty, active, and turbulent, like that of all those Flemish and Walloon cities which the spirit of mediaeval industry had warmed for a time into vehement little republics.

But, as has already been depicted in these pages, the Celtic element had been more apt to receive than consistent to retain the generous impress which had once been stamped on all the Netherlands.  The Walloon provinces had fallen away from their Flemish sisters and seemed likely to accept a permanent yoke, while in the territory of the united States, as John Baptist Tassis was at that very moment pathetically observing in a private letter to Philip, “with the coming up of a new generation educated as heretics from childhood, who had never heard what the word king means, it was likely to happen at last that the king’s memory, being wholly forgotten nothing would remain in the land but heresy alone.”  From this sad fate Cambray had been saved.  Gavre d’Inchy had seventeen years before surrendered the city to the Duke of Alencon during that unlucky personage’s brief and base career in the Netherlands, all, that was left of his visit being the semi-sovereignty which the notorious Balagny had since that time enjoyed, in the archiepiscopal city.  This personage, a natural son of Monluc, Bishop of Valence, and nephew of the, distinguished Marshal Monluci was one of the most fortunate and the most ignoble of all the soldiers of fortune who had played their part at this epoch in the Netherlands.  A poor creature himself, he had a heroine for a wife.  Renee, the sister of Bussy d’Amboise, had vowed to unite herself to a man who would avenge the assassination of her brother by the Count Montsoreau?  Balagny readily agreed to perform the deed, and accordingly espoused the high-born dame, but it does not appear that he ever wreaked her vengeance on the murderer.  He had now governed Cambray until the citizens and the whole countryside were galled and exhausted by his grinding tyranny, his inordinate pride, and his infamous extortions.  His latest achievement had been to force upon his subjects a copper currency bearing the nominal value of silver, with the same blasting effects which such experiments in political economy are apt to produce on princes and peoples.  He had been a Royalist, a Guisist, a Leaguer, a Dutch republican, by turns, and had betrayed all the parties, at whose expense he had alternately filled his coffers.  During the past year he had made up his mind—­like most of the conspicuous politicians and campaigners of France—­that the moribund League was only fit to be trampled upon by its recent worshippers, and he had made accordingly one of the very best bargains with Henry Iv. that had yet been made, even at that epoch of self-vending grandees.