considering itself the natural head of all the southern country, was
indignant that the Walloon provinces should dare to reassert that
supremacy of Romanism which had been so effectually suppressed, and to
admit the possibility of friendly relations with a sovereign who had been
virtually disowned. There were two parties, however, in Ghent. Both
were led by men of abandoned and dangerous character. Imbize, the worse
of the two demagogues, was inconstant, cruel, cowardly, and treacherous,
but possessed of eloquence and a talent for intrigue. Ryhove was a
bolder ruffian--wrathful, bitter, and unscrupulous. Imbize was at the
time opposed to Orange, disliking his moderation, and trembling at his
firmness. Ryhove considered himself the friend of the Prince. We have
seen that he had consulted him previously to his memorable attack upon
Aerschot, in the autumn of the preceding year, and we know the result of
that conference.

The Prince, with the slight dissimulation which belonged less to his
character than to his theory of politics, and which was perhaps not to be
avoided, in that age of intrigue, by any man who would govern his fellow-
men, whether for good or evil, had winked at a project which he would not
openly approve. He was not thoroughly acquainted, however, with the
desperate character of the man, for he would have scorned an instrument
so thoroughly base as Ryhove subsequently proved. The violence of that
personage on the occasion of the arrest of Aerschot and his colleagues
was mildness compared with the deed with which he now disgraced the cause
of freedom. He had been ordered out from Ghent to oppose a force of
Malcontents which was gathering in the neighbourhood of Courtray; but he
swore that he would not leave the gates so long as two of the gentlemen
whom he had arrested on the twenty-eighth of the previous October, and
who yet remained in captivity, were still alive. These two prisoners
were ex-procurator Visch and Blood-Councillor Hessels. Hessels, it