but well-founded timidity withheld him
from appearing before the honored man, while cherishing the gloomy
thoughts that now filled his soul.

In Aalst the mutineers received him with eager joy, harsh and repellent
as he appeared, they cheerfully obeyed him; for he could hold out to them
a prospect, which lured a bright smile to the bearded lips of the
grimmest warrior.

If power was the word, he scarcely understood how to use it aright, for
wholly absorbed in himself, he led a joyless life of dissatisfied longing
and gloomy reverie.

It seemed to him as if he had lost one half of himself, and needed Ruth
to become the whole man. Hours grew to days, days to weeks, and not until
Roda's messenger appeared from the citadel in Antwerp to summon him to
action, did he revive and regain his old vivacity.

CHAPTER XXX.

On the twentieth of October Mastricht fell into the Spaniards' hands, and
was cruelly pillaged. The garrison of Antwerp rose and began to make
common cause with the friends of the mutineers in the citadel.

Foreign merchants fled from the imperilled city. Governor Champagny saw
his own person and the cause of order seriously threatened by the despots
in the fortress, which dominated the town. A Netherland army, composed
principally of Walloons, under the command of the incapable Marquis
Havre, the reckless de Heze and other nobles appeared before the capital,
to prevent the worst.

Champagny feared that the German regiments would feel insulted and scent
treason, if he admitted the government troops--but the majority of the
lansquenets were already in league with the insurgents, the danger hourly
increased, everywhere loyalty wavered, the citizens urgently pressed the
matter, and the gates were opened to the Netherlanders.

Count Oberstein, the German commander of the lansquenets, who while
intoxicated had pledged himself to make common cause with the mutineers
in the citadel, remembered his duty and remained faithful to the end. The
regiment in which Hans Eitelfritz served, and the other companies of
lansquenets, had succumbed to the temptation, and only waited the signal
for revolt. The inhabitants felt just like a man, who keeps powder and
firebrands in the cellar, or a traveller, who recognizes robbers and
murderers in his own escort.

Champagny called upon the citizens to help themselves, and used their
labor in throwing up a wall of defence in the open part of the city,
which was most danger