ying district of the Spanish empire. In such case
obedient France might be annexed to obedient Netherlands, and united
under the sway of Archduke Ernest.

But these dreams had proved in the cold air of reality but midsummer
madness. When the name of the archduke was presented to the estates as
King Ernest I. of France, even the most unscrupulous and impassioned
Leaguers of that country fairly hung their heads. That a foreign prince,
whose very name had never been before heard of by the vast bulk of the
French population, should be deliberately placed upon the throne of St.
Louis and Hugh Capet, was a humiliation hard to defend, profusely as
Philip had scattered the Peruvian and Mexican dollars among the great
ones of the nation, in order to accomplish his purpose.

So Archduke Ernest, early in the year 1594, came to Brussels, but he came
as a gloomy, disappointed man. To be a bachelor-governor of the
impoverished, exhausted, half-rebellious, and utterly forlorn little
remnant of the Spanish Netherlands, was a different position from that of
husband of Clara Isabella and king of France, on which his imagination
had been feeding so long.

For nearly the whole twelvemonth subsequent to the death of Farnese, the
Spanish envoy to the Imperial court had been endeavouring to arrange for
the departure of the archduke to his seat of government in the
Netherlands. The prince himself was willing enough, but there were many
obstacles on the part of the emperor and his advisers. "Especially there
is one very great impossibility," said San Clemente, "and that is the
poverty of his Highness, which is so great that my own is not greater in
my estate. So I don't see how he can stir a step without money. Here
they'll not furnish him with a penny, and for himself he possesses
nothing but debts." The emperor was so little pleased with the adventure
that in truth, according to the same authority, he looked upon the new
viceroy's embarrassments with considerable satisfaction, so that it was
necessary for Philip to provide for his travelling expenses.

Ernest was next brother of the Emperor Rudolph, and as intensely devoted
to the interests of the Roman Church as was that potentate himself, or
even his uncle Philip.

He was gentle, weak, melancholy, addicted to pleasure, a martyr to the
gout. He brought no soldiers to the provinces, for the emperor,
threatened with another world-empire on his pagan flank, had no funds nor
troops to send