d 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 she attempted a word in their defence, or lifted, at
any subsequent moment, a finger to save them. She was not anxious to wash
her hands of the blood of two innocent men; she was only offended that
they had been arrested without her permission. The Duke had, it is true,
sent Berlaymont and Mansfeld to give her information of the fact, as soon
as the capture had been made, with the plausible excuse that he preferred
to save her from all the responsibility and all the unpopularity of the
measure, Nothing, however, could appease her wrath at this and every
other indication of the contempt in which he appeared to hold the sister
of his sovereign. She complained of his conduct daily to every one who
was admitted to her presence. Herself oppressed by a sense of personal
indignity, she seemed for a moment to identify herself with the cause of
the oppressed provinces. She seemed to imagine herself the champion of
their liberties, and the Nether