ing a gratitude from the king to which he had not sown. He could, therefore, expect nothing but hostility from him, and prudence counselled him to screen himself by a timely flight from its actual outbreak. He had hitherto obstinately refused to take the new oath; and all the written exhortations of the regent had been fruitless. At last she sent to him at Antwerp her private secretary Berti, who was to put the matter em phatically to his conscience, and forcibly remind him of all the evil consequences which so sudden a retirement from the royal service would draw upon the country, as well as the irreparable injury it would do to his own fair fame. Already, she informed him by her ambassador, his declining the required oath had cast a shade upon his honour, and imparted to the general voice, which accused him of an understanding with the rebels, an appearance of truth which this unconditional resignation would convert to absolute certainty. It was for the sovereign to discharge his servants, but it did not become the servant to abandon his sovereign. The envoy of the regent found the prince in his palace at Antwerp, already, as it appeared, withdrawn from the public service, and entirely devoted to his private concerns. The prince told him, in the presence of Hogstraten, that he had refused to take the required oath, because he could not find that such a proposition had ever before been made to a governor of a province; because he had already bound himself, once for all, to the king, and therefore, by taking this new oath, he would tacitly acknowledge that he had broken the first. He had also refused, because the old oath enjoined him to protect the rights and privileges of the country, but he could not tell whether this new one might not impose upon him duties which would contravene the first; because, too, the clause which bound him to serve, if required, against all without distinction, did not except even the Emperor, his feudal lord, against whom, however, he, as his vassal, could not conscientiously make war. He had refused to take this oath, because it might impose upon him the necessity of surrendering his friends and relations, his children, nay, even his wife, who was a Lutheran, to butchery. According to it, moreover, he must lend himself to every thing which it should occur to the king's fancy or passion to demand; but the king might thus exact from him things which he shuddered even to think of; and

even the severities which were now, and had been all along exercised upon the Protestants, were the most revolting to his. heart. This oath, in short, was repugnant to his feelings as a man, and he could not take it. In conclusion, the name of the Duke of Alva dropped from his lips, in a tone of bitterness, and he became immediately silent.

All these objections were answered, point by point, by Berti. Certainly such an oath had never been required from a governor before him, because the provinces had never been similarly circumstanced. It was not exacted because the governors had broken the first, but in order to remind them vividly of their former vows, and to freshen their activity in the present emergency. This oath would not impose upon him any thing which offended against the rights and privileges of the country, for the king had sworn to observe these, as well as the Prince of Orange. The oath did not, it was true, contain any reference to a war with the Emperor, or any other sovereign to whom the prince might be related; and if he really had scruples on this point, a distinct clause could easily be inserted, expressly providing against such a contingency. Care would be taken to spare him any duties which were repugnant to his feelings as a man, and no power on earth would compel him to act against his wife or against his children. Berti was then passing to the last point, which related to the Duke of Alva, but the prince, who did not wish to have this part of his discourse canvassed, interrupted him. "The king was coming to the Netherlands," he said, "and he knew the king. The king would not endure that one of his servants should have wedded a Lutheran, and he had, therefore, resolved to go with his whole family into voluntary banishment, before he was obliged to submit to the same by compulsion. But," he concluded, “wherever he might be, he would always conduct himself as a subject of the king." Thus far-fetched were the motives which the prince adduced, to avoid touching upon the single one which really decided him.

Berti had still a hope of obtaining, through Egmont's eloquence, what by his own he despaired of effecting. He therefore proposed a meeting with the latter (1567), which the prince assented to the more willingly, as he himself felt a desire to embrace his friend once more before his departure,

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and if possible, to snatch the deluded man from certain destruction. This remarkable meeting, at which the private secretary Berti, and the young Count Mansfeld, were also present, was the last that the two friends ever held, and took place in Villebroeck, a village on the Rupel, between Brussels and Antwerp. The Calvinists, whose last hope rested on the issue of this conference, found means to acquaint themselves of its import by a spy, who concealed himself in the chimney of the apartment where it was held. All three attempted to shake the determination of the prince, but their united eloquence was unable to move him from his purpose. It will cost you your estates, Orange, if you persist in this intention," said the Prince of Gaure, as he took him aside to a window. "And you your life, Egmont, if you change not yours," replied the former. "To me it will at least be a consolation in my misfortunes, that I desired, in deed as well as in word, to help my country and my friends in the hour of need; but you, my friend, you are dragging friends and country with you to destruction." And saying these words, he once again exhorted him, still more urgently than ever, to return to the cause of his country, which his arm alone was yet able to preserve; if not, at least, for his own sake, to avoid the tempest which was gathering against him from Spain

But all the arguments, however lucid, with which a far discerning prudence supplied him, and however urgently enforced, with all the ardour and animation which the tender anxiety of friendship could alone inspire, did not avail to destroy the fatal confidence which still fettered Egmont's better reason. The warning of Orange seemed to come from a sad and dispirited heart; but for Egmont the world still smiled. To abandon the pomp and affluence in which he had grown up to youth and manhood; to part with all the thousand conveniences of life which alone made it valuable to him, and all this to escape an evil which his buoyant spirit regarded as remote, if not imaginary; no, that was not a sacrifice which could be asked from Egmont. But had he even been less given to indulgence than he was, with what heart could he have consigned a princess accustomed by uninterrupted prosperity to ease and comfort, a wife who loved him as dearly as she was beloved, the children on whom his soul hung in hope and fondness, to privations at the prospect

of which his own courage sank, and which a sublime philosophy alone can enable sensuality to undergo. "You will never persuade me, Orange," said Egmont, "to see things in the gloomy light in which they appear to thy mournful prudence. When I have succeeded in abolishing the public preachings, and chastising the Iconoclasts, in crushing the rebels, and restoring peace and order in the provinces, what can the king lay to my charge? The king is good and just; I have claims upon his gratitude, and I must not forget what I owe to myself." "Well, then," cried Orange indignantly, and with bitter anguish, "trust, if you will, to this royal gratitude! but a mournful presentiment tells me-and may Heaven grant that I am deceived!-that you, Egmont, will be the bridge by which the Spaniards will pass into our country to destroy it." After these words, he drew him to his bosom, ardently clasping him in his arms. Long, as though the sight was to serve for the remainder of his life, did he keep his eyes fixed upon him; the tears fell; they saw each other no more.

The very next day, the Prince of Orange wrote his letter of resignation to the regent, in which he assured her of his perpetual esteem, and once again entreated her to put the best interpretation on his present step. He then set off, with his three brothers, and his whole family, for his own town of Breda, where he remained only as long as was requisite to arrange some private affairs. His eldest son, Prince Philip William, was left behind at the University of Louvain, where he thought him sufficiently secure under the protection of the privileges of Brabant, and the immunities of the academy; an imprudence which, if it was really not designed, can hardly be reconciled with the just estimate which, in so many other cases, he had taken of the character of his adversary. In Breda, the heads of the Calvinists once more consulted him whether there was still hope for them, or whether all was irretrievably lost. "He had before advised them," replied the prince, "and must now do so again, to accede to the Confession of Augsburg; then they might rely upon aid from Germany. If they would still not consent to this, they must raise 600,000 florins, or more, if they could.” "The first," they answered, was at

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variance with their conviction and their conscience; but means might perhaps be found to raise the money, if he would only let them know for what purpose he would use it.

"No!" cried he, with the utmost displeasure, "if I must tell you that, it is all over with the use of it." With these words he immediately broke off the conference, and dismissed the deputies.

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The Prince of Orange was reproached with having squandered his fortune, and with favouring the innovations on account of his debts; but he asserted that he still enjoyed 60,000 florins yearly rental. Before his departure, he borrowed 20,000 florins from the states of Holland, on the mortgage of some manors. Men could hardly persuade themselves that he would have succumbed to necessity so entirely, and without an effort at resistance, given up all his hopes and schemes. But what he secretly meditated no one knew, no one had read in his heart. Being asked how he intended to conduct himself towards the King of Spain. Quietly," was his answer, "unless he touches my honour or my estates." He left the Netherlands soon afterwards, and betook himself in retirement to the town of Dillenburg in Nassau, at which place he was born. He was accompanied to Germany by many hundreds, either as his servants or as volunteers, and was soon followed by Counts Hogstraten, Kuilemberg, and Bergen, who preferred to share a voluntary exile with him, rather than recklessly involve themselves in an uncertain destiny. In his departure the nation saw the flight of its guardian angel; many had adored, all had honoured him. With him the last stay of the Protestants gave way; they, however, had greater hopes from this man in exile, than from all the others together who remained behind. Even the Roman Catholics could not witness his departure without regret. Them also had he shielded from tyranny; he had not unfrequently protected them against the oppression of their own church, and he had rescued many of them from the sanguinary jealousy of their religious opponents. A few fanatics among the Calvinists, who were offended with his proposal of an alliance with their brethren, who avowed the Confession of Augsburg, solemnized with secret thanksgivings the day on which the enemy left them. 1567.