Ernest had been announced, fell straightway into a trance. While he was
in that condition, a beautiful female apparition floated before his eyes,
and, on being questioned, announced her name to be Moralization. John
Baptist begged her to inform him whether it were true, as had been
stated, that Jupiter had just sent Mercury to the Netherlands. The
phantom, correcting his mistake, observed that the king of gods and men
had not sent Hermes but the Archduke Ernestus, beloved of the three
Graces, favourite of the nine Muses, and, in addition to these
advantages, nephew and brother-in-law of the King of Spain, to the relief
of the suffering provinces. The Netherlands, it was true, for their
religious infidelity, had justly incurred great disasters and misery; but
benignant Jove, who, to the imagination of this excited Fleming, seemed
to have been converted to Catholicism while still governing the universe,
had now sent them in mercy a deliverer. The archduke would speedily
relieve "bleeding Belgica" from her sufferings, bind up her wounds, and
annihilate her enemies. The spirit further informed the poet that the
forests of the Low Countries--so long infested by brigands, wood-beggars,
and malefactors of all kinds--would thenceforth swarm with "nymphs,
rabbits, hares, and animals of that nature."

A vision of the conquering Ernest, attended by "eight-and-twenty noble
and pleasant females, marching two and two, half naked, each holding a
torch in one hand and a laurel-wreath in the other," now swept before the
dreamer's eyes." He naturally requested the "discreet spirit" to mention
the names of this bevy of imperfectly attired ladies thronging so
lovingly around the fortunate archduke, and was told that "they were
the eight-and-twenty virtues which chiefly characterized his serene
Highness." Prominent in this long list, and they were all faithfully
enumerated, were Philosophy, Audacity, Acrimony, Virility, Equity, Piety,
Velocity, and Alacrity." The two last-mentioned qualities could hardly