w it now--whether he looked backward to the past or
forward to the future. The greatness he had gained he overlooked; what
awaited him in the future, having lost his clearness of vision and
impartiality, he was disposed to overvalue.

From her eyes, on the contrary, this knowledge removed veil after veil.

It was a vain delusion which led him to the belief that the Scottish and
English crowns possessed the power to render him happy, and end his
struggle for new and higher honours; for royalty also belonged to the
glory whose worthlessness she now perceived as plainly as the reflection
of her own face in the surface of the mirror.

Barbara saw her son for only a few more fleeting hours; the "Spanish
fury" which destroyed the flower of Antwerp doubled his business cares,
forbade any delay, and imperiously claimed his whole time and strength.

The mother watched his honest labours sorrowfully. She knew that the
chivalrous champion of the faith, the sincere enthusiast, to whom nothing
was higher than honour and the stainless purity of his name, must succumb
to his most eminent foe, the Prince of Orange, with his tireless,
inventive, thoroughly statesmanlike intellect, which preserved the power
of seeing in the darkness, and did not shrink from deceit where it would
promote the great cause which she did not understand, but to which he
consecrated every drop of his heart's blood, every penny of his property.

Her son came to the country as a Spaniard and the brother of the hated
Philip on the day of the most abominable crime history ever narrated, and
which his followers committed; and who stood higher in the hearts of the
people of the Netherlands than their beloved helper in need, their
"Father William"?

She saw her son go to this hopeless conflict like a garlanded victim to
the altar. She had nothing to aid him save her prayers and the execution
of the heavy sacrifice which she had resolved to make. The collapse of
her belief, wishes, and expectations produced a transformation of her
whole nature. A world of ideas had crumbled into fragments before and
within her, and from their ruins a new one suddenly sprang up in her
strong soul. Where yesterday her warlike temper had defied or resisted,
to-day she retired with lowered weapons. To contend against her son, and
force her new knowledge upon him, would have seemed to her foolish and
fruitless, for she desired and expected nothing more from him than that
he should keep