De Fromont reminded him, in reply, of the frequent revolutions of fortune’s wheel, and warned him that the advancement of which he boasted would probably be an entire degradation.  He bitterly recalled to the remembrance of the new zealot for Romanism his former earnest efforts to establish Calvinism.  He reproached him, too, with having melted up the silver images of the Mechlin churches, including even the renowned shrine of Saint Rombout, which the Prince of Orange had always respected.  “I don’t say how much you took of that plunder for your own share,” continued the indignant De Fromont, “for the very children cry it in your ears as you walk the streets.  ’Tis known that if God himself had been changed into gold you would have put him in your pocket.”

This was plain language, but as just as it was plain.  The famous shrine of Saint Rombout—­valued at seventy thousand guldens, of silver gilt, and enriched with precious stones—­had been held sacred alike by the fanatical iconoclasts and the greedy Spaniards who had successively held the city.  It had now been melted up, and appropriated by Peter Lupin; the Carmelite, and De Bours, the Catholic convert, whose mouths were full of devotion to the ancient Church and of horror for heresy.

The efforts of Orange and of the states were unavailing.  De Bours surrendered the city, and fled to Parma, who received him with cordiality, gave him five thousand florins—­the price promised for his treason, besides a regiment of infantry—­but expressed surprise that he should have reached the camp alive.  His subsequent career was short, and he met his death two years afterwards, in the trenches before Tournay.  The archiepiscopal city was thus transferred to the royal party, but the gallant Van der Tympel, governor of Brussels, retook it by surprise within six months of its acquisition by Parma, and once more restored it to the jurisdiction of the states.  Peter Lupus, the Carmelite, armed to the teeth, and fighting fiercely at the head of the royalists, was slain in the street, and thus forfeited his chance for the mitre of Namur.

During the weary progress of the Cologne negotiations, the Prince had not been idle, and should this august and slow-moving congress be unsuccessful in restoring peace, the provinces were pledged to an act of abjuration.  They would then be entirely without a head.  The idea of a nominal Republic was broached by none.  The contest had not been one of theory, but of facts; for the war had not been for revolution, but for conservation, so far as political rights were concerned.  In religion, the provinces had advanced from one step to another, till they now claimed the largest liberty—­freedom of conscience—­for all.  Religion, they held, was God’s affair, not man’s, in which neither people nor king had power over each other, but in which both were subject to God alone.  In politics it was different.  Hereditary sovereignty was acknowledged as a fact, but at the same time, the spirit of freedom was already learning its appropriate language.  It already claimed boldly the natural right of mankind to be governed according to the laws of reason and of divine justice.  If a prince were a shepherd, it was at least lawful to deprive him of his crook when he butchered the flock which he had been appointed to protect.