rds of threatening import."

Van Artevelde, who was not the least afraid of the threat, and who at
heart was fond of the English, told the Count that he would do as he had
promised the communes. "Hereupon he left the Count, who consulted his
confidants as to what he was to do in this business, and they counselled
him to let them go and assemble their people, saying that they would
kill Van Artevelde secretly or otherwise. And, indeed, they did lay many
traps and made many attempts against the captain; but it was of no
avail, since all the commonalty was for him." When the rumor of these
projects and these attempts was spread abroad in the city, the
excitement was extreme, and all the burghers assumed white hoods, which
was the mark peculiar to the members of the commune when they assembled
under their flags; so that the Count found himself reduced to assuming
one, for he was afraid of being kept captive at Ghent, and, on the
pretext of a hunting-party, he lost no time in gaining his castle of
Male.

The burghers of Ghent had their minds still filled with their late alarm
when they heard that by order, it was said, of the King of France--Count
Louis had sent and beheaded at the castle of Rupelmonde, in the very bed
in which he was confined by his infirmities, their fellow-citizen Sohier
of Courtrai, Van Artevelde's father-in-law, who had been kept for many
months in prison for his intimacy with the English. On the same day the
Bishop of Senlis and the Abbot of St. Denis had arrived at Tournai, and
had superintended the reading out in the market-place of a sentence of
excommunication against the Ghentese.

It was probably at this date that Van Artevelde in his vexation and
disquietude assumed in Ghent an attitude threatening and despotic even
to tyranny. "He had continually after him," says Froissart, "sixty or
eighty armed varlets, among whom were two or three who knew some of his
secrets. When he met a man whom he hated or had in suspicion, this man
was at once killed, for Van Artevelde had given this order to his
varlets: 'The moment I meet a man, and make such and such a sign to you,
slay him without delay, however great he may be, without waiting for
more speech.' In this way he had many great masters slain. And as soon
as these sixty varlets had taken him home to his hotel, each went to
dinner at his own house; and the moment dinner was over they returned
and stood before his hotel and waited in the street until t