placed himself towards the Crown in a false position, from which he might
even yet be rescued; for to sacrifice the whims of a reforming and
transitory religious fanaticism, which had spun itself for a moment about
so clear a brain, would, he thought, prove but a trifling task for so
experienced a politician as the Prince. William of Orange, on the
other hand, looked upon his young antagonist as the most brilliant
impersonation which had yet been seen of the foul spirit of persecution.

It will be necessary to follow, somewhat more in detail than is usually
desirable, the interchange of conversations, letters, and protocols, out
of which the brief but important administration of Don John was composed;
for it was exactly in such manifestations that the great fight was really
proceeding. Don John meant peace, wise William meant war, for he knew
that no other issue was possible. Peace, in reality, was war in its
worst shape. Peace would unchain every priestly tongue, and unsheath
every knightly sword in the fifteen provinces against little Holland and
Zealand. He had been able to bind all the provinces together by the
hastily forged chain of the Ghent treaty, and had done what he could to
strengthen that union by the principle of mutual religious respect.
By the arrival of Don John that work had been deranged. It had, however,
been impossible for the Prince thoroughly to infuse his own ideas on the
subject of toleration into the hearts of his nearest associates.
He could not hope to inspire his deadly enemies with a deeper sympathy.
Was he not himself the mark of obloquy among the Reformers, because of
his leniency to Catholics? Nay more, was not his intimate councillor,
the accomplished Saint Aldegonde, in despair because the Prince refused
to exclude the Anabaptists of Holland from the rights of citizenship?
At the very moment when William was straining every nerve to unite
warring sects, and to persuade men's hearts into a system by which their
consciences were to be laid open to God alone--at the moment when it was