punishment which had requited his broken faith.

The mischief being thus afoot, the tongue of Roland, and the
easily-excited spirits of the citizens, soon did the rest. Ghent broke
forth into open insurrection. They had been willing to enlist and pay
troops under their own banners, but they had felt outraged at the
enormous contribution demanded of them for a foreign war, undertaken in
the family interests of their distant master. They could not find the
"Bargain of Flanders," but they got possession of the odious "calf skin,"
which was solemnly cut in two by the dean of the weavers. It was then
torn in shreds by the angry citizens, many of whom paraded the streets
with pieces of the hated document stuck in their caps, like plumes. From
these demonstrations they proceeded to intrigues with Francis the First.
He rejected them, and gave notice of their overtures to Charles, who now
resolved to quell the insurrection, at once. Francis wrote, begging that
the Emperor would honor him by coming through France; "wishing to assure
you," said he, "my lord and good brother, by this letter, written and
signed by my hand, upon my honor, and on the faith of a prince, and of
the best brother you have, that in passing through my kingdom every
possible honor and hospitality will be offered you, even as they could be
to myself." Certainly, the French king, after such profuse and voluntary
pledges, to confirm which he, moreover, offered his two sons and other
great individuals as hostages, could not, without utterly disgracing
himself, have taken any unhandsome advantage of the Emperor's presence in
his dominions. The reflections often made concerning the high-minded
chivalry of Francis, and the subtle knowledge of human nature displayed
by Charles upon the occasion, seem, therefore, entirely superfluous. The
Emperor came to Paris. "Here," says a citizen of Ghent, at the time, who
has left a minute account of the transaction upon record, but whose
sympathies were ludicrously with the despot and against his own