enthusiasm, when the conqueror of Lepanto brought down the bird, and was
proclaimed king of the year, amid the tumultuous hilarity of the crowd.
According to custom, the captains of the guild suspended a golden
popinjay around the neck of his Highness, and placing themselves in
procession, followed him to the great church. Thence, after the
customary religious exercises, the multitude proceeded to the banquet,
where the health of the new king of the cross-bowmen was pledged in deep
potations. Long and loud was the merriment of this initiatory festival,
to which many feasts succeeded during those brief but halcyon days, for
the good-natured Netherlanders already believed in the blessed advent
of peace. They did not dream that the war, which had been consuming
the marrow of their commonwealth for ten flaming years, was but in its
infancy, and that neither they nor their children were destined to see
its close.

For the moment, however, all was hilarity at Louvain. The Governor,
by his engaging deportment, awoke many reminiscences of the once popular
Emperor. He expressed unbounded affection for the commonwealth, and
perfect confidence in the loyalty of the inhabitants. He promised to
maintain their liberties, and to restore their prosperity. Moreover, he
had just hit the popinjay with a skill which his imperial father might
have envied, and presided at burgher banquets with a grace which Charles
could have hardly matched. His personal graces, for the moment, took the
rank of virtues. "Such were the beauty and vivacity of his eyes," says
his privy councillor, Tassis, "that with a single glance he made all
hearts his own," yet, nevertheless, the predestined victim secretly felt
himself the object of a marksman who had no time for painted popinjays,
but who rarely missed his aim. "The whole country is at the devotion of
the Prince, and nearly every one of its inhabitants;" such was his secret
language to his royal brother, at the very moment of the exuberant