provost of Brabant was popularly designated, was never idle.  He flew from village to village throughout the province, executing the bloody behests of his masters with congenial alacrity.  Nevertheless his career was soon destined to close upon the same scaffold where he had so long officiated.  Partly from caprice, partly from an uncompromising and fantastic sense of justice, his master now hanged the executioner whose industry had been so untiring.  The sentence which was affixed to his breast, as he suffered, stated that he had been guilty of much malpractice; that he had executed many persons without a warrant, and had suffered many guilty persons for a bribe, to escape their doom.  The reader can judge which of the two clauses constituted the most sufficient reason.

During all these triumphs of Alva, the Prince of Orange had not lost his self-possession.  One after another, each of his bold, skilfully-conceived and carefully-prepared plans had failed.  Villers had been entirely discomfited at Dalhena, Cocqueville had been cut to pieces in Picardy, and now the valiant and experienced Louis had met with an entire overthrow in Friesland.  The brief success of the patriots at Heiliger Zee had been washed out in the blood-torrents of Jemmingen.  Tyranny was more triumphant, the provinces more timidly crouching, than ever.  The friends on whom William of Orange relied in Germany, never enthusiastic in his cause, although many of them true-hearted and liberal, now grew cold and anxious.  For months long, his most faithful and affectionate allies, such men as the Elector of Hesse and the Duke of Wirtemberg, as well as the less trustworthy Augustus of Saxony, had earnestly expressed their opinion that, under the circumstances, his best course was to sit still and watch the course of events.

It was known that the Emperor had written an urgent letter to Philip on the subject of his policy in the Netherlands in general, and concerning the position of Orange in particular.  All persons, from the Emperor down to the pettiest potentate, seemed now of opinion that the Prince had better pause; that he was, indeed, bound to wait the issue of that remonstrance.  “Your highness must sit still,” said Landgrave William.  “Your highness must sit still,” said Augustus of Saxony.  “You must move neither hand nor foot in the cause of the perishing provinces,” said the Emperor.  “Not a soldier-horse, foot, or dragoon-shall be levied within the Empire.  If you violate the peace of the realm, and embroil us with our excellent brother and cousin Philip, it is at your own peril.  You have nothing to do but to keep quiet and await his answer to our letter.”  But the Prince knew how much effect his sitting still would produce upon the cause of liberty and religion.  He knew how much effect the Emperor’s letter was like to have upon the heart of Philip.  He knew that the more impenetrable the darkness now gathering over that land of doom which he had devoted his life to defend, the more urgently