is so unfortunate a family in the
whole world. I am not sure that the countess has the means of procuring
a supper this very evening!"[1192]

Philip, in answer to these letters, showed that he was not disposed to
shrink from his own share of responsibility for the proceedings of his
general. The duke, he said, had only done what justice and his duty
demanded.[1193] He could have wished that the state of things had
warranted a different result; nor could he help feeling deeply that
measures like those to which he had been forced should have been
necessary in his reign. "But," continued the king, "no man has a right
to shrink from his duty.[1194]--I am well pleased," he concludes, "to
learn that the two lords made so good and Catholic an end. As to what
you recommend in regard to the countess of Egmont and her eleven
children, I shall give all proper heed to it."[1195]

[Sidenote: FATE OF EGMONT'S FAMILY.]

The condition of the countess might well have moved the hardest heart
to pity. Denied all access to her husband, she had been unable to
afford him that consolation which he so much needed during his long and
dreary confinement. Yet she had not been idle; and, as we have seen, she
was unwearied in her efforts to excite a sympathy in his behalf. Neither
did she rely only on the aid which this world can give; and few nights
passed during her lord's imprisonment in which she and her daughters
might not be seen making their pious pilgrimages, barefooted, to the
different churches of Brussels, to invoke the blessing of Heaven on
their labors. She had been supported through this trying time by a
reliance on the success of her endeavors, in which she was confirmed by
the encouragement she received from the highest quarters. It is not
necessary to give credit to the report of a brutal jest attributed to
the duke of Alva, who, on the day preceding the execution, was said to
have told the countess "to be of good cheer; for her husband would leave
the prison on the morrow!"[1196] There is more reason to believe that
the Emperor Maximilian, shortly before the close of the trial, sent a
gentleman with a kind letter to the countess, testifying the interest he
took in her affairs, and assuring her she had nothing to fear on account
of her husband.[1197] On the very morning of Egmont's execution, she was
herself, we are told, paying a visit of condolence to the countess of
Aremberg, whose husband had lately fallen in the battle of H