one of the similar dialogues between Petit
Andre and Louis the Eleventh, in "Quentin Durward."

The proceedings in Ghent may show the course pursued in the other
cities. Commissioners were sent to that capital, to ferret out the
suspected. No than a hundred and forty-seven were summoned before the
council at Brussels. Their names were cried about the streets, and
posted up in placards on the public buildings. Among them were many
noble and wealthy individuals. The officers were particularly instructed
to ascertain the wealth of the parties. Most of the accused contrived to
make their escape. They preferred flight to the chance of an acquittal
by the bloody tribunal,--though flight involved certain banishment and
confiscation of property. Eighteen only answered the summons by
repairing to Brussels. They were all arrested on the same day, at their
lodgings, and, without exception, were sentenced to death! Five or six
of the principal were beheaded. The rest perished on the gallows.[1057]

[Sidenote: TRIALS AND EXECUTIONS.]

Impatient of what seemed to him a too tardy method of following up his
game, the duke determined on a bolder movement, and laid his plans for
driving a goodly number of victims into the toils at once. He fixed on
Ash Wednesday for the time,--the beginning of Lent, when men, after the
Carnival was past, would be gathered soberly in their own
dwellings.[1058] The officers of justice entered their premises at dead
of night; and no less than five hundred citizens were dragged from their
beds and hurried off to prison.[1059] They all received sentence of
death![1060] "I have reiterated the sentence again and again," he writes
to Philip, "for they torment me with inquiries whether in this or that
case it might not be commuted for banishment. They weary me of my life
with their importunities."[1061] He was not too weary, however, to go on
with the bloody work; for in the same letter we find him reckoning that
three hundred heads more must fall before it will be time to talk of a
general pardon.[1062]

It was common, says an old chronicler, to see thirty or forty persons
arrested at once. The wealthier burghers might be seen, with their arms
pinioned behind them, dragged at the horse's tail to the place of
execution.[1063] The poorer sort were not even summoned to take their
trial in Brussels. Their cases were despatched at once, and they were
hung up, without further delay, in the city or in the suburbs.[1