general of the Zeeland troops, with Sabina, daughter of the unfortunate
Lamoral Egmont, were celebrated with much pomp during the months of
February and March. The States of Holland and of Zeeland made
magnificent presents of diamonds to the brides; the Countess Hohenlo
receiving besides a yearly income of three thousand florins for the lives
of herself and her husband.

In the midst of these merry marriage bells at the Hague a funeral knell
was sounding in Brussels. On the 20th February, the governor-general of
the obedient Netherlands, Archduke Ernest, breathed his last. His career
had not been so illustrious as the promises of the Spanish king and the
allegories of schoolmaster Houwaerts had led him to expect. He had not
espoused the Infanta nor been crowned King of France. He had not blasted
the rebellious Netherlands with Cyclopean thunderbolts, nor unbound the
Belgic Andromeda from the rock of doom. His brief year of government
had really been as dismal as, according to the announcement of his
sycophants, it should have been amazing. He had accomplished nothing,
and all that was left him was to die at the age of forty-two, over head
and ears in debt, a disappointed, melancholy man. He was very indolent,
enormously fat, very chaste, very expensive, fond of fine liveries and
fine clothes, so solemn and stately as never to be known to laugh, but
utterly without capacity either as a statesman or a soldier. He would
have shone as a portly abbot ruling over peaceful friars, but he was not
born to ride a revolutionary whirlwind, nor to evoke order out of chaos.
Past and Present were contending with each other in fierce elemental
strife within his domain. A world was in dying agony, another world was
coming, full-armed, into existence within the hand-breadth of time and of
space where he played his little part, but he dreamed not of it. He
passed away like a shadow, and was soon forgotten.