contemplated in the great transaction.  All had played well their parts in the past, all hoped the best in the times which were to follow.  The abdicating Emperor was looked upon as a hero and a prophet.  The stage was drowned in tears.  There is not the least doubt as to the genuine and universal emotion which was excited throughout the assembly.  “Caesar’s oration,” says Secretary Godelaevus, who was present at the ceremony, “deeply moved the nobility and gentry, many of whom burst into tears; even the illustrious Knights of the Fleece were melted.”  The historian, Pontus Heuterus, who, then twenty years of age, was likewise among the audience, attests that “most of the assembly were dissolved in tears; uttering the while such sonorous sobs that they compelled his Caesarean Majesty and the Queen to cry with them.  My own face,” he adds, “was certainly quite wet.”  The English envoy, Sir John Mason, describing in a despatch to his government the scene which he had just witnessed, paints the same picture.  “The Emperor,” he said, “begged the forgiveness of his subjects if he had ever unwittingly omitted the performance of any of his duties towards them.  And here,” continues the envoy, “he broke into a weeping, whereunto, besides the dolefulness of the matter, I think, he was moche provoked by seeing the whole company to do the lyke before; there beyng in myne opinion not one man in the whole assemblie, stranger or another, that dewring the time of a good piece of his oration poured not out as abundantly teares, some more, some lesse.  And yet he prayed them to beare with his imperfections, proceeding of his sickly age, and of the mentioning of so tender a matter as the departing from such a sort of dere and loving subjects.”

And yet what was the Emperor Charles to the inhabitants of the Netherlands that they should weep for him?  His conduct towards them during his whole career had been one of unmitigated oppression.  What to them were all these forty voyages by sea and land, these journeyings back and forth from Friesland to Tunis, from Madrid to Vienna.  What was it to them that the imperial shuttle was thus industriously flying to and fro?  The fabric wrought was but the daily growing grandeur and splendor of his imperial house; the looms were kept moving at the expense of their hardly-earned treasure, and the woof was often dyed red in the blood of his bravest subjects.  The interests of the Netherlands had never been even a secondary consideration with their master.  He had fulfilled no duty towards them, he had committed the gravest crimes against them.  He had regarded them merely as a treasury upon which to draw; while the sums which he extorted were spent upon ceaseless and senseless wars, which were of no more interest to them than if they had been waged in another planet.  Of five millions of gold annually, which he derived from all his realms, two millions came from these industrious and opulent provinces, while but a half