alloon provinces should dare to reassert that
supremacy of Romanism which had been so effectually suppressed, and to
admit the possibility of friendly relations with a sovereign who had been
virtually disowned. There were two parties, however, in Ghent. Both were
led by men of abandoned and dangerous character. Imbize, the worse of the
two demagogues, was inconstant, cruel, cowardly, and treacherous, but
possessed of eloquence and a talent for intrigue. Ryhove was a bolder
ruffian--wrathful, bitter, and unscrupulous. Imbize was at the time
opposed to Orange, disliking his moderation, and trembling at his
firmness. Ryhove considered himself the friend of the Prince. We have
seen that he had consulted him previously to his memorable attack upon
Aerschot, in the autumn of the preceding year, and we know the result of
that conference.

The Prince, with the slight dissimulation which belonged less to his
character than to his theory of politics, and which was perhaps not to be
avoided, in that age of intrigue, by any man who would govern his
fellow-men, whether for good or evil, had winked at a project which he
would not openly approve. He was not thoroughly acquainted, however, with
the desperate character of the man, for he would have scorned an
instrument so thoroughly base as Ryhove subsequently proved. The violence
of that personage on the occasion of the arrest of Aerschot and his
colleagues was mildness compared with the deed with which he now
disgraced the cause of freedom. He had been ordered out from Ghent to
oppose a force of Malcontents which was gathering in the neighbourhood of
Courtray; but he swore that he would not leave the gates so long as two
of the gentlemen whom he had arrested on the twenty-eighth of the
previous October, and who yet remained in captivity, were still alive.
These two prisoners were ex-procurator Visch and Blood-Councillor
Hessels. Hessels, it seemed, had avowed undying hostility to Ryhove for
the injury sustained at his hands, and he had sworn, "by his grey beard,"
that the ruffian should yet hang for the outrage. Ryhove, not feeling
very safe in the position of affairs which then existed, and knowing that
he could neither trust Imbize, who had formerly been his friend, nor the
imprisoned nobles, who had ever been his implacable enemies, was resolved
to make himself safe in one quarter at least, before he set forth against
the Malcontents. Accordingly, Hessels and Visch, as they sat tog