his friendly offices in his behalf. He received with boyish
gratification the festivities with which Lodron enlivened his brief
sojourn at Antwerp, and he set forth without reluctance for that gloomy
and terrible land of Spain, whence so rarely a Flemish traveller had
returned. A changeling, as it were, from his cradle, he seemed
completely transformed by his Spanish tuition, for he was educated and
not sacrificed by Philip. When he returned to the Netherlands, after a
twenty years' residence in Spain, it was difficult to detect in his
gloomy brow, saturnine character, and Jesuistical habits, a trace of the
generous spirit which characterized that race of heroes, the house of
Orange-Nassau.

Philip had expressed some anxiety as to the consequences of this capture
upon the governments of Germany. Alva, however, re-assured his sovereign
upon that point, by reason of the extreme docility of the captive, and
the quiet manner in which the arrest had been conducted. At that
particular juncture, moreover, it would, have been difficult for the
government of the Netherlands to excite surprise any where, except by
an act of clemency. The president and the deputation of professors
from the university of Louvain waited upon Vargas, by whom, as acting
president of the Blood-Council, the arrest had nominally been made, with
a remonstrance that the measure was in gross violation of their statutes
and privileges. That personage, however, with his usual contempt both
for law and Latin, answered brutally, "Non curamus vestros privilegios,"
and with this memorable answer, abruptly closed his interview with the
trembling pedants.

Petitions now poured into the council from all quarters, abject
recantations from terror-stricken municipalities, humble intercessions
in behalf of doomed and imprisoned victims. To a deputation of the