moment-I say, suppose for a single moment only, that I were one of you. I should in that case say, why excite by hostile demonstrations the severity of the regent, and thereby provoke her to make angry representations to the king, which may prevent his possible leniency? And why, by alarming and provoking the Catholics, deprive yourselves of that general sympathy which would prove your most powerful shield against oppression? Suffer all aggression to come from the opposing quarter."

Surely your highness does not mean to say that our patience has not endured long enough? The king's reign has been but one long series of oppression, religious and political-he has spared us on no point. But I forgot. Your highness has been sent by the regent to pacify the town, and this is the aim to which all your endeavours naturally tend."

"You remind me, not inaptly," said the prince, with marked coolness, "that mine is a mission of peace; nor can I suffer this opportunity to escape me, without warning you that I will leave no means untried in order to effect my object. That I would rather have recourse to persuasion you may perceive; but rest assured I will not shrink from harsher measures in the exercise of my duty. I repeat, you must abolish those open meetings-they are thorns in the sides of all alike; and what makes your folly the more egregious is, that if they should cause bloodshed, your own party, which is the weakest, must be crushed."

"We do not think so, my lord," said Paul, a scornful smile curling his lip.

"Then are you short-sighted indeed," said the prince, gravely. "I have spoken to you as a friend, Master van Meeren, more so than you are perhaps aware of."

"Oh! your highness may speak as severely as you please-we all know you are the friend of the unhappy and the persecuted." "You do me but justice," said the prince more mildly,

"and as far as

I am able, I will extend every alleviation towards you." "Your highness has proved that in the case of my unhappy brother so clearly, that I should be the most ungrateful of men to doubt it."

"Trust, then, my intentions, and attend to my counsel. Employ all your influence with those of your sect, to persuade them to appear no more in arms as they have done hitherto; for under pretence of protecting themselves, they become objects of general alarm, and we the governors of provinces cannot suffer such disorders to continue. If you are obstinate in this matter, you will compel us to employ force in order to put down a show of force that insults our authority; if you can neither be convinced nor awed," added the prince, impatiently, "then, by my faith, you must be punished."

your

"I am afraid you might not find even the latter task so easy, my lord," said Paul, bluntly. "If I were to obey the impulse of personal gratitude warming at this moment at my heart, I would undertake to do pleasure at once; for I will not deny my influence to be great among many of my countrymen; but I mistrust my personal feelings, and would fain avoid being swayed by them-nor can I adopt the same view of the subject that your highness takes. Years of concession and the tamest endurance have availed us in nought it is now our turn to try the power of compulsion. I am a plain-spoken man, and I know I may perhaps offend by my frankness, where I should least wish to do so; but I will even take the risk upon myself, and open my mind to your high

ness. If the regent were to keep the promises she made to us-I say us, for I too am a Gueux-and if she would add in favour of the Protestants but the one boon to treat us as Christians, and permit us to worship according to our tenets-if she would but allow us to build churches for ourselves within the walls of the city, and permit the foreign Protestant merchants to come and go as they list, I think I could promise, in behalf of my brethren, that we would gladly abandon the fields, and the armed assemblages of which you complain would be heard of no more. Our chief aim is, and has ever been, to obtain the free exercise of our religion -for liberty of conscience, the freedom of the mind, no prince can fetter. Beyond that few among us look or desire anything. Some, perhaps, like me, feel their bosoms glow with more fiery thoughts-but they are very few."

"You mean rebellion," said the prince, dryly.

"King Philip may call it so; I call it freedom!" answered Paul, sternly. "This is a mere point of opinion."

"Most people would call it one of conscience," said the prince, with a cold smile.

66

Possibly!" answered Paul. "Mine has for years ceased to trouble me on that score; but in the case which your highness has proposed, it does not allow me to act in accordance with my individual feelings when others, and a large community, have entrusted me with their interests. If, therefore, you can and will grant the boon I ask, I will, on their part, guarantee all that I have promised; I will even speak to the preachers themselves. I have, luckily, a strong personal influence in that quarter."

"If we come to conditions," said the prince, "I must insist on making mine clear. Can you engage that the tumults which are apprehended by the magistrates at the approaching festival of the Virgin shall not take place? Can you insure the perfect quiescence of the Protestants until such a time as we get news from Spain? If you can take this upon yourself, I may then, perhaps, do what you desire. Indeed, if I could but justify the act to the regent, I have no hesitation in saying I would gladly grant what I cannot but consider a just demand, although I do not approve the means by which your party has sought to enforce it."

The prince paused thoughtfully, and there ensued a silence of some moments, which Paul was the first to break, and when he spoke his eyes glistened with inward emotion.

"I would entreat your highness to remember that your princely brothers, and many of your companions in arms, offer their homage to the Divinity in the same simple, manly form as we do, and that they feel the same indignation that fills our breast against the oppression of the Church of Rome."

"I have never disowned my sympathy with the sufferings of the Protestants," said the prince, drawing himself up with a look of great dignity, "either in the cabinet or the council."

"If your highness could but have added the field !” said Paul, his very brow crimsoning with hope and eagerness.

"That may not be," said the prince. "Perhaps"

There was something in the tone and look with which these words were uttered that spoke volumes of untold promises to the anxious and observing burgher. The perhaps, which seemed to have escaped invo

luntarily the lips of his august interlocutor, appeared to him the first link of a chain of thoughts the prince was unwilling to betray, but which Paul fancied he could guess. He accepted it as a half-implied promise for the future-a hope, the brightest he had formed for many a day, that the time might come when the Prince of Orange would declare himself the champion of the oppressed Protestants. "I may not now, but perhaps the day is not far distant when I shall fight for your cause, and make it triumph." This was the meaning with which Paul invested the broken sentence, and it elated his heart and caused his brow to brighten with hope and joy. Approaching the prince he addressed him with an air of greater deference than he had yet displayed.

"I will believe I will trust you implicitly, my lord, and will be guided entirely by your counsel; but, although I may be able to effect much, especially when empowered by your highness to give consoling promises to my friends, yet I cannot answer for the multitude."

"Do your best, and I shall be satisfied. Your party should prize you highly, Master van Meeren, who have dared to speak so boldly whilst your brother remains yet a hostage in my power. Were all the in

habitants of this town as reasonable as yourself, I should have been able to prevail upon them to establish a guard of twelve thousand men—a proposal which, obstinately as they now reject it, I am sure the day will come when they will repent not having adopted. However, you may bear to the Protestants the assurance that they may, henceforth, pray in consecrated walls-erected by their own means— -blessed by their own priests. They shall no longer be obliged to scour the fields like hunted beasts of prey. Lay down your arms and perform your devotions like humble Christians, with hands meekly folded in prayer, and not like rebel subjects with the deadly weapons of war in your grasp. Yes, you may build, as soon as you please, temples of your own within the walls of this city, and pray henceforth according to the inclination of your hearts. This privilege will I confirm at my own proper risk and peril; it may, perhaps, be thought too unbounded at court, but I grant it."

"Your highness must not limit this blessed boon," said Paul, firmly, though respectfully.

"What more can you possibly desire?" said the prince, a slight, almost imperceptible shade of impatience crossing his brow.

"Suffer us not only to worship, but to wed, christen, and bury, according to the rites of our Church."

"If that be all," replied the prince, with a smile peculiarly his own, the blandness of which imparted a most winning expression to his countenance" if that be all, the boon was yours before you named it. I am no casuist, nor very deeply versed in theology. In granting you the permission to erect temples, and the indulgence of your ministers, I did not think to restrict the power wherewith you might choose to invest the latter, nor the use to which you might wish to consecrate the former. Master Paul van Meeren, I have proceeded further in this matter than I may be able to justify; than you, perhaps, anticipated, or even hoped, when first entered this room. you But now, I too hope and trust that the waters I thus guide into a permitted and satisfactory channel, will not again overflow and devastate the land."

"Certainly not, my lord," exclaimed Paul, promptly. "Gratitude and love, such as that which the people of Antwerp are bound to feel for

your highness, are stronger curbs upon men's actions than oppression, be it ever so powerful. It is not for one so simple in heart, and rough in bearing, as myself, to attempt to offer the thanks of an oppressed community on receiving so great a boon as that which your highness has granted. I would do this but I cannot. Even as an affectionate brother, whose brother you have saved, I lack words to express my feelings. I can but thank you, my lord, and assure you that the blessings of a doting wife and a fond daughter will be added to the many that are daily showered on you by the numerous hearts your benefits have made grateful. But as a Protestant and a patriot, my life-my blood are yours; for I am certain your highness means us better even than your words express."

There was a pause which the prince did not choose to break. He continued in the posture of listening, though Paul had ceased speaking, as if he fancied he had more to hear, and wished the latter to proceed.

"If your highness spoke but one magic word," continued Paul, encouraged by the prince's manner and attitude of benevolent attention, "thousands and thousands would lay their lives-their fortunes at your feet, with the same cheerful alacrity with which I would sacrifice both at your highness's bidding. The same trust in your greatness-the same unbounded reliance on your wisdom-the same enthusiasm for the virtues of their leader, would animate every breast, rouse the Protestants throughout this land, and the whole of the northern provinces who look up to your highness with the firm and enduring hope that in the hour of their utmost need they will find safety under the shadow of your wing, and that their cruel wrongs will at last put the avenger's sword in your noble hand; and were but one other great lord to join you-were our liberties proclaimed by the Count of Egmont as well as by the Prince of Orange-all the Flemings from north to south, from east to west, would rise like one man to shake off Spain, and proclaim the independence of our states. Oh! could I but witness that day, I should then be content to die, sure that if I lived ages I never could see such another! Then, indeed, our name as a nation, and those of our glorious leaders as heroes, written on the pages of history in letters of light, would shine in after ages like a beacon to warn the wrecked and the oppressed into harbour!"

Paul spoke with all the energy of his nature. His words came forth almost too quick for utterance, and his deep, full voice trembled, and became husky with agitation, whilst his eye flashed and every feature-every muscle worked, and the sallow, colourless hue of his cheek and brow gave way to a vivid glow as the ruling passion of his life, overmastering every conventional feeling, made him forget all else for a time-even that he was unbosoming himself to a Catholic prince-a minister-perhaps even a tool of Philip of Spain.

But whilst he there stood, every fibre quivering with emotion, he formed the strongest contrast to his calm, impassible auditor. Paul's countenance was a page of Nature's own inditing; with every character so legibly and forcibly written, that it required no skill or practice to read every line of its import- whilst that of the prince was like unto a sealed book, the leaves of which no mortal hand may turn, whose secrets no mortal eye can penetrate. Vain the inquiry that would have determined, as the "Taciturn" averted from the animated countenance of the burgher towards the close of his impassioned address, the steady, searching gaze

which had, at first, rested full upon the speaker, and his inscrutable physiognomy gradually lost even the expression of attention, and no light, no shadow was suffered to play upon it and reveal the secrets that lay concealed beneath its unruffled surface-vain the inquiry that would have determined if that eye were turned aside to conceal resentment or approbation-a look of menace, or one of promise. William of Nassau spoke not, and a fresh pause ensued, which Paul did not again break.

"Well," said the prince, at length, starting from his reverie, "we thoroughly understand each other. The assemblies in the open fields will be henceforth abandoned; and whilst I promise on the one hand that no Catholic shall interfere with the erecting of your churches, so you, on the other, will engage yourselves that the festival of the Virgin, more especially the procession on that day, shall meet with no interruption whatever-that its sacred character shall be respected as well as public peace. Sound policy should point out to you the necessity of this behaviour."

"Gratitude, my lord, makes it our duty to comply with your desire. I freely engage my honour as a pledge for my own party; nay, so great is my confidence in those of my creed, that I will even add for all the Protestants in Antwerp, let their denomination be what it

may." "It is then agreed, that you henceforth resume quiet habits, and a decorous bearing such as befits sober burghers and respectable men of all creeds, and that your arms will be laid down at once and for ever."

The prince looked as if he expected a reply-it was promptly given. "I trust, my lord, you have understood my pledge rightly. So long as we are leniently treated we will avoid giving offence. King Philip alone can determine our future movements. My promise is to your highness, and to you alone. I hold no pledge of the king or of the regent, and if I did I would not trust them."

The prince dismissed the citizen with an urbanity that never deserted him in his intercourse with inferiors; but when the page on duty had conducted Van Meeren from the apartment, he half thought and half muttered" More such as he, and the path were clear before me; but they are too rare, too few. Egmont, too, what romantic scruples are his! his childish trust! himself his only thought, his only mirror whereby to judge the world! Well, one can but watch the tide as it ebbs and flows, and guide the poor sinking bark accordingly. But the port-where, when, how to reach it?-That William is thy care," he said aloud, in reply to the question his thoughts had framed. He passed one hand across his brow, as if to banish thence all external evidence of his mental soliloquy, then returned to his secretaries, and without an effort brought the lofty intellect, so recently lost in the future's vague and misty vista, to bear upon the every-day and mechanical drudgery of the mind, applying to it the same sound sense, clear perception, and investigating attention which were ever so brilliantly displayed in the momentous affairs of life.