so strict as to prevent frequent intercourse with his friends without.  Champagny was indeed believed to be the life of the whole intrigue.  The plot was, however, forwarded by Imbize, the roaring demagogue whose republicanism could never reconcile itself with what he esteemed the aristocratic policy of Orange, and whose stern puritanism could be satisfied with nothing short of a general extermination of Catholics.  This man, after having been allowed to depart, infamous and contemptible, from the city which he had endangered, now ventured after five years, to return, and to engage in fresh schemes which were even more criminal than his previous enterprises.  The uncompromising foe to Romanism, the advocate of Grecian and Genevan democracy, now allied himself with Champagny and with Chimay, to effect a surrender of Flanders to Philip and to the Inquisition.  He succeeded in getting himself elected chief senator in Ghent, and forthwith began to use all his influence to further the secret plot.  The joint efforts and intrigues of Parma, Champagny, Chimay, and Imbize, were near being successful.  Early, in the spring of 1584 a formal resolution was passed by the government of Ghent, to open negotiations with Parma.  Hostages were accordingly exchanged, and a truce of three weeks was agreed upon, during which an animated correspondence was maintained between the authorities of Ghent and the Prince of Chimay on the one side, and the United States-general, the magistracy of Antwerp, the states of Brabant, and other important bodies on the other.

The friends of the Union and of liberty used all their eloquence to arrest the city of Ghent in its course, and to save the province of Flanders from accepting the proposed arrangement with Parma.  The people of Ghent were reminded that the chief promoter of this new negotiation was Champagny, a man who owed a deep debt of hatred to their city, for the long, and as he believed, the unjust confinement which he had endured within its walls.  Moreover, he was the brother of Granvelle, source of all their woes.  To take counsel with Champagny, was to come within reach of a deadly foe, for “he who confesses himself to a wolf,” said the burgomasters of Antwerp, “will get wolf’s absolution.”  The Flemings were warned by all their correspondents that it was puerile to hope for faith in Philip; a monarch whose first principle was, that promises to heretics were void.  They were entreated to pay no heed to the “sweet singing of the royalists,” who just then affected to disapprove of the practice adopted by the Spanish Inquisition, that they might more surely separate them from their friends.  “Imitate not,” said the magistrates of Brussels, “the foolish sheep who made with the wolves a treaty of perpetual amity, from which the faithful dogs were to be excluded.”  It was affirmed—­and the truth was certainly beyond peradventure—­that religious liberty was dead at the moment when the treaty with Parma should be signed.  “To