No man felt more keenly the importance of the business in which he was engaged than Parma.  He knew his work exactly, and he meant to execute it thoroughly.  Antwerp was the hinge on which the fate of the whole country, perhaps of all Christendom, was to turn.  “If we get Antwerp,” said the Spanish soldiers—­so frequently that the expression passed into a proverb—­“you shall all go to mass with us; if you save Antwerp, we will all go to conventicle with you.”

Alexander rose with the difficulty and responsibility of his situation.  His vivid, almost poetic intellect formed its schemes with perfect distinctness.  Every episode in his great and, as he himself termed it, his “heroic enterprise,” was traced out beforehand with the tranquil vision of creative genius; and he was prepared to convert his conceptions into reality, with the aid of an iron nature that never knew fatigue or fear.

But the obstacles were many.  Alexander’s master sat in his cabinet with his head full of Mucio, Don Antonio, and Queen Elizabeth; while Alexander himself was left neglected, almost forgotten.  His army was shrinking to a nullity.  The demands upon him were enormous, his finances delusive, almost exhausted.  To drain an ocean dry he had nothing but a sieve.  What was his position?  He could bring into the field perhaps eight or ten thousand men over and above the necessary garrisons.  He had before him Brussels, Antwerp, Mechlin, Ghent, Dendermonde, and other powerful places, which he was to subjugate.  Here was a problem not easy of solution.  Given an army of eight thousand, more or less, to reduce therewith in the least possible time, half-a-dozen cities; each containing fifteen or twenty thousand men able to bear arms.  To besiege these places in form was obviously a mere chimera.  Assault, battery, and surprises—­these were all out of the question.

Yet Alexander was never more truly heroic than in this position of vast entanglement.  Untiring, uncomplaining, thoughtful of others, prodigal of himself, generous, modest, brave; with so much intellect and so much devotion to what he considered his duty, he deserved to be a patriot and a champion of the right, rather than an instrument of despotism.

And thus he paused for a moment—­with much work already accomplished, but his hardest life-task before him; still in the noon of manhood, a fine martial figure, standing, spear in hand, full in the sunlight, though all the scene around him was wrapped in gloom—­a noble, commanding shape, entitled to the admiration which the energetic display of great powers, however unscrupulous, must always command.  A dark, meridional physiognomy, a quick; alert, imposing head; jet black, close-clipped hair; a bold eagle’s face, with full, bright, restless eye; a man rarely reposing, always ready, never alarmed; living in the saddle, with harness on his back—­such was the Prince of Parma; matured and mellowed, but still unharmed by time.