pectation, was vain. At daybreak next day, the mob swept upon the
churches and stripped them to the very walls. Pictures, statues; organs,
ornaments, chalices of silver and gold, reliquaries, albs, chasubles,
copes, ciboriea, crosses, chandeliers, lamps; censers, all of richest
material, glittering with pearls, rubies, and other precious stones, were
scattered in heaps of ruin upon the ground.

As the Spoilers burrowed among the ancient tombs, they performed, in one
or two instances, acts of startling posthumous justice. The embalmed body
of Duke Adolphus of Gueldres, last of the Egmonts, who had reigned in
that province, was dragged from its sepulchre and recognized. Although it
had been there for ninety years, it was as uncorrupted, "Owing to the
excellent spices which had preserved it from decay," as upon the day of
burial. Thrown upon the marble floor of the church, it lay several days
exposed to the execrations of the multitude. The Duke had committed a
crime against his father, in consequence of which the province which had
been ruled by native races, had passed under the dominion of Charles the
Bold. Weary of waiting for the old Duke's inheritance, he had risen
against him in open rebellion. Dragging him from his bed at midnight in
the depth of winter, he had compelled the old man, with no covering but
his night gear, to walk with naked feet twenty-five miles over ice and
snow from Grave to Buren, while he himself performed the same journey in
his company on horseback. He had then thrown him into a dungeon beneath
the tower of Buren castle, and kept him a close prisoner for six months.

[Memoires de Philippe de Comines (Loud. et Paris, 1747), liv. iv.
194-196. In the Royal Gallery at Berlin is a startling picture by
Rembrandt, in which the old Duke is represented looking out of the
bars of his dungeon at his son, who is threatening him with uplifted
hand and savage face. No subject could be imagined better adapted
to the gloomy and sarcastic genius of that painter.]

At last, the Duke of Burgundy summoned the two before his council, and
proposed that Adolphus should allow his father 6000 florins annually,
with the title of Duke till his death. "He told us," said Comines, "that
he would sooner throw the old man head-foremost down a well and jump in
himself afterwards. His father had been Duke forty-four years, and it was
time for him to retire." Adolphus being thus intractable, had been kept
in