the soul had entirely departed.”  Recovering afterwards from this stony trance of indignation, he demanded a sight of their instructions.  This they courteously refused, as they were accredited not to him, but to the states of Artois.  At this he fell into a violent passion, and threatened them with signal chastisement for daring to come thither with so treasonable a purpose.  In short, according to their own expression; he treated them “as if they had been rogues and vagabonds.”  The Marquis of Havre, high-born though he was, had been sufficiently used to such conduct.  The man who had successively served and betrayed every party, who had been the obsequious friend and the avowed enemy of Don John within the same fortnight, and who had been able to swallow and inwardly digest many an insult from that fiery warrior, was even fain to brook the insolence of Robert Melun.

The papers which the deputation had brought were finally laid before the states of Artois, and received replies as prompt and bitter as the addresses were earnest and eloquent.  The Walloons, when summoned to hold to that aegis of national unity, the Ghent peace, replied that it was not they, but the heretic portion of the states-general, who were for dashing it to the ground.  The Ghent treaty was never intended to impair the supremacy of the Catholic religion, said those provinces, which were already on the point of separating for ever from the rest.  The Ghent treaty was intended expressly to destroy the inquisition and the placards, answered the national-party.  Moreover, the “very marrow of that treaty” was the-departure of the foreign soldiers, who were even then overrunning the land.  The Walloons answered that Alexander had expressly conceded the withdrawal of the troops.  “Believe not the fluting and the piping of the crafty foe,” urged the patriots.  “Promises are made profusely enough—­but only to lure you to perdition.  Your enemies allow you to slake your hunger and thirst with this idle hope of the troops’ departure, but you are still in fetters, although the chain be of Spanish pinchbeck, which you mistake for gold.” “’Tis not we,” cried the Walloons, “who wish to separate from the generality; ’tis the generality which separates from us.  We had rather die the death than not maintain the union.  In the very same breath, however, they boasted of the excellent terms which the monarch was offering, and of their strong inclination to accept them.”  “Kings, struggling to recover a lost authority, always promise golden mountains and every sort of miracles,” replied the patriots; but the warning was uttered in vain.