It was evident
the hour for resistance had not yet come.

[Sidenote: OATH REFUSED BY ORANGE.]

Yet for William to remain in his present position was hazardous in the
extreme. Rumors had gone abroad that the duke of Alva would soon be in
the Netherlands, at the head of a force sufficient to put down all
opposition. "Beware of Alva," said his wife's kinsman, the landgrave of
Hesse, to William; "I know him well."[891] The prince of Orange also
knew him well,--too well to trust him. He knew the hard, inexorable
nature of the man who was now coming with an army at his back, and
clothed with the twofold authority of judge and executioner. The first
blow would, he knew, be aimed at the highest mark. To await Alva's
coming would be to provoke his fate. Yet the prince felt all the
dreariness of his situation. "I am alone," he wrote to the Landgrave
William of Hesse, "with dangers menacing me on all sides, yet without
one trusty friend to whom I can open my heart."[892]

Margaret seems to have been less prepared than might have been expected
for the decision of Orange. Yet she determined not to let him depart
from the country without an effort to retain him. She accordingly sent
her secretary, Berty, to the prince at Antwerp, to enter into the matter
more freely, and, if possible, prevail on him to review the grounds of
his decision. William freely, and at some length, stated his reasons for
declining the oath. "If I thus blindly surrender myself to the will of
the king, I may be driven to do what is most repugnant to my principles,
especially in the stern mode of dealing with the sectaries. I may be
compelled to denounce some of my own family, even my wife, as Lutherans,
and to deliver them into the hands of the executioner. Finally," said
he, "the king may send some one in his royal name to rule over us, to
whom it would be derogatory for me to submit." The name of "Alva"
escaped, as if involuntarily, from his lips,--and he was silent.[893]

Berty endeavored to answer the objections of the prince, but the latter,
interrupting him before he had touched on the duke of Alva, bluntly
declared that the king would never be content while one of his great
vassals was wedded to a heretic. It was his purpose, therefore, to leave
the country at once, and retire to Germany; and with this remark he
abruptly closed the conference.

The secretary, though mortified at his own failure, besought William to
consent to an interview, before hi