subsequent transactions in the Netherland revolt, arranged purposely for
dramatic effect. Several copies of the Compromise were passed secretly
from hand to hand, and in the course of two months some two thousand
signatures had been obtained. The original copy bore but three names,
those of Brederode, Charles de Mansfeld, and Louis of Nassau.
The composition of the paper is usually ascribed to Sainte Aldegonde,
although the fact is not indisputable. At any rate, it is very certain
that he was one of the originators and main supporters of the famous
league. Sainte Aldegonde was one of the most accomplished men of his
age. He was of ancient nobility, as he proved by an abundance of
historical and heraldic evidence, in answer to a scurrilous pamphlet in
which he had been accused, among other delinquencies, of having sprung
from plebeian blood. Having established his "extraction from true and
ancient gentlemen of Savoy, paternally and maternally," he rebuked his
assailants in manly strain. "Even had it been that I was without
nobility of birth," said he, "I should be none the less or more a
virtuous or honest man; nor can any one reproach me with having failed
in the point of honor or duty. What greater folly than to boast of the
virtue or gallantry of others, as do many nobles who, having neither a
grain of virtue in their souls nor a drop of wisdom in their brains, are
entirely useless to their country! Yet there are such men, who, because
their ancestors have done some valorous deed, think themselves fit to
direct the machinery of a whole country, having from their youth learned
nothing but to dance and to spin like weathercocks with their heads as
well as their heels." Certainly Sainte Aldegonde had learned other
lessons than these. He was one of the many-sided men who recalled
the symmetry of antique patriots. He was a poet of much vigor and
imagination; a prose writer whose style was surpassed by that of none
of his contemporaries, a diplomatist in whose tact and delicacy William
of Orange afterwards reposed in the most difficult and important