istinguished personages, he
thanked them cordially for their visit, but regretted that it would be no
longer in his power to entertain any propositions of a pacific nature.
The necessary reinforcements, which he had been so long expecting, had at
last reached him, and it would not yet be necessary for him to retire
into his ruined nest. Military honour therefore would not allow him to
detain them any longer. Should he ever be so hard pressed again he felt
sure that so magnanimous a prince as his Highness would extend to him all
due clemency and consideration.

The Spaniards; digesting as they best could the sauce of contumely with
which the gross treachery of the transaction was now seasoned, solemnly
withdrew, disdaining to express their spleen in words of idle menace.

They were escorted back through the lines, and at once made their report
at headquarters. The festival had been dismally interrupted before it was
well begun. The vessels were soon observed by friend and foe making their
way triumphantly up to the town where they soon dropped anchor at the
wharf of the inner Gullet, having only a couple of sailors wounded,
despite all the furious discharges of Bucquoy's batteries. The holiday
makers dispersed, much discomfited, the English hostages returned to the
town, and the archduke shut himself up, growling and furious. His
generals and counsellors, who had recommended the abandonment of his
carefully prepared assault, and acceptance of the perfidious propositions
to negotiate, by which so much golden time had been squandered, were for
several days excluded from his presence.

Meantime the army, disappointed, discontented, half-starved, unpaid,
passed their days and nights as before, in the sloppy trenches, while
deep and earnest were the complaints and the curses which succeeded to
the momentary exultation of Christmas eve. The soldiers were more than
ever embittered against their august commander-in-chief, for they had
just enjoyed a signal opportunity of comparing the luxury and comfortable
magnificence of his Highness and the Infanta, and of contrasting it with
their own misery. Moreover, it had long been exciting much indignation in
the ranks that veteran generals and colonels, in whom all men had
confidence, had been in great numbers superseded in order to make place
for court favourites, utterly without experience or talent. Thus the
veterans; murmuring in the wet trenches. The archduke meanwhile, in his
s