His bald head was uncovered, his hands were unbound. He calmly saluted
such of his acquaintances as he chanced to recognize upon his path. Under
a black cloak, which he threw off when he had ascended the scaffold, he
wore a plain, dark doublet, and he did not, like Egmont, wear the
insignia of the Fleece. Casting his eyes upon the corpse, which lay
covered with the dark cloth, he asked if it were the body of Egmont.
Being answered in the affirmative, he muttered a few words in Spanish,
which were not distinctly audible. His attention was next caught by the
sight of his own coat of arms reversed, and he expressed anger at this
indignity to his escutcheon, protesting that he had not deserved the
insult. He then spoke a few words to the crowd below, wishing them
happiness, and begging them to pray for his soul. He did not kiss the
crucifix, but he knelt upon the scaffold to pray, and was assisted in his
devotions by the Bishop of Ypres. When they were concluded, he rose
again to his feet. Then drawing a Milan cap completely over his face,
and uttering, in Latin, the same invocation which Egmont had used, he
submitted his neck to the stroke.

Egmont had obtained, as a last favor, that his execution should precede
that of his friend. Deeming himself in part to blame for Horn's
reappearance in Brussels after the arrival of Alva, and for his, death,
which was the result, he wished to be spared the pang of seeing him dead.
Gemma Frisius, the astrologer who had cast the horoscope of Count Horn at
his birth, had come to him in the most solemn manner to warn him against
visiting Brussels. The Count had answered stoutly that he placed his
trust in God, and that, moreover, his friend Egmont was going thither
also, who had engaged that no worse fate should befal the one of them
than the other.

The heads of both sufferers were now exposed for two hours upon the iron