prove obedient. Should mercenary troops at this late hour be sent for?
Would not their appearance at this crisis rather inflame the rage than
intimidate the insolence of the sectaries? Never were magistrates in
greater perplexity. They knew not what course was likely to prove the
safest, and in their anxiety to do nothing wrong, the senators did
nothing at all. After a long and anxious consultation, the honest
burgomaster and his associates all went home to their beds, hoping that
the threatening flame of civil tumult would die out of itself, or perhaps
that their dreams would supply them with that wisdom which seemed denied
to their waking hours.

In the morning, as it was known that no precaution had been taken, the
audacity of the Reformers was naturally increased. Within the cathedral
a great crowd was at an early hour collected, whose savage looks and
ragged appearance denoted that the day and night were not likely to pass
away so peacefully as the last. The same taunts and imprecations were
hurled at the image of the Virgin; the same howling of the beggars' cry
resounded through the lofty arches. For a few hours, no act of violence
was committed, but the crowd increased. A few trifles, drifting, as
usual, before the event, seemed to indicate the approaching convulsion.
A very paltry old woman excited the image-breaking of Antwerp. She had
for years been accustomed to sit before the door of the cathedral with
wax-tapers and wafers, earning scanty subsistence from the profits of her
meagre trade, and by the small coins which she sometimes received in
charity. Some of the rabble began to chaffer with this ancient
hucksteress. They scoffed at her consecrated wares; they bandied with
her ribald jests, of which her public position had furnished her with a
supply; they assured her that the hour had come when her idolatrous
traffic was to be forever terminated, when she and her patroness, Mary,
were to be given over to destruction together. The old woman, enraged,