man of Egmont's adherents--if he indeed had adherents among the townsmen
--dared to show his face. The young traitor and his whole regiment,
drawn up on the Grande Place, were completely entrapped. He had not
taken Brussels, but assuredly Brussels had taken him. All day long he
was kept in his self-elected prison and pillory, bursting with rage and
shame. His soldiers, who were without meat or drink, became insolent and
uproarious, and he was doomed also to hear the bitter and well-merited
taunts of the towns-people. A thousand stinging gibes, suggested by his
name and the locality, were mercilessly launched upon him. He was asked
if he came thither to seek his father's head. He was reminded that the
morrow was the anniversary of that father's murder upon that very spot--
by those with whom the son would now make his treasonable peace. He was
bidden to tear up but a few stones from the pavement beneath his feet,
that the hero's blood might cry out against him from the very ground.

Tears of shame and fury sprang from the young man's eyes as he listened
to these biting sarcasms, but the night closed upon that memorable
square, and still the Count was a prisoner. Eleven years before, the
summer stars had looked down upon a more dense array of armed men within
that place. The preparations for the pompous and dramatic execution,
which on the morrow was to startle all Europe, had been carried out in
the midst of a hushed and overawed population; and now, on the very
anniversary of the midnight in which that scaffold had risen, should not
the grand spectre of the victim have started from the grave to chide his
traitorous son?

Thus for a whole day and night was the baffled conspirator compelled to
remain in the ignominious position which he had selected for himself. On
the morning of the 5th of June he was permitted to depart, by a somewhat
inexplicable indulgence, together with all his followers. He rode out of