een compelled to
superintend the proceedings. The plot had been an excellent plot, and was
accomplished as successfully as it bad been sagaciously conceived. None
but Spaniards had been employed in any part of the affair. Officers of
high rank in his Majesty's army had performed the part of spies and
policemen with much adroitness, nor was it to be expected that the duty
would seem a disgrace, when the Prior of the Knights of Saint John was
superintendent of the operations, when the Captain-General of the
Netherlands had arranged the whole plan, and when all, from subaltern to
viceroy, had received minute instructions as to the contemplated
treachery from the great chief of the Spanish police, who sat on the
throne of Castile and Aragon.

No sooner were these gentlemen in custody than the secretary Albornoz was
dispatched to the house of Count Horn, and to that of Bakkerzeel, where
all papers were immediately seized, inventoried, and placed in the hands
of the Duke. Thus, if amid the most secret communications of Egmont and
Horn or their correspondents, a single treasonable thought should be
lurking, it was to go hard but it might be twisted into a cord strong
enough to strangle them all.

The Duke wrote a triumphant letter to his Majesty that very night. He
apologized that these important captures had been deferred so long but,
stated that he had thought it desirable to secure all these leading
personages at a single stroke. He then narrated the masterly manner in
which the operations had been conducted. Certainly, when it is remembered
that the Duke had only reached Brussels upon the 23d August, and that the
two Counts were securely lodged in prison on the 9th of September, it
seemed a superfluous modesty upon his part thus to excuse himself for an
apparent delay. At any rate, in the eyes of the world and of posterity,
his zeal to carry out the bloody commands of his master was sufficiently
swift.

The consternation was universal throughout the provinces when the arrests
became known. Egmont's great popularity and distinguished services placed
him so high above the mass of citizens, and his attachment to the
Catholic religion was moreover so well known, as to make it obvious that
no man could now be safe, when men like him were in the power of Alva and
his myrmidons. The animosity to the Spaniards increased hourly. The
Duchess affected indignation at the arrest of the two nobles, although it
nowhere appears that sh