ashes came new courage. Burned, broken, the
Belgians and the Dutch were not beaten. Pushed at last into Holland,
where they united their fortunes with the Dutch, they cut the dykes of
Holland, and let in the ocean, and clinging to the dykes with their
finger tips, fought their way back to the land; but no sooner had the
last of the Spaniards gone than out of their rags and poverty they
founded a university as a monument to the providence of God in
delivering them out of the hands of their enemies. For, the Sixteenth
Century, in the form of a brave knight, wears little Belgium and Holland
like a red rose upon his heart.

THE DEATH OF EGMONT

But some of you will say that the Belgian people must have been rebels
and guilty of some excess, and that had they remained quiescent, and not
fomented treason, that no such fate could have overtaken them at the
hands of Spain. Very well. I will take a youth who, at the beginning,
believed in Charles the Fifth, a man who was as true to his ideals as
the needle to the pole. One day the "Bloody Council" decreed the death
of Egmont and Horn. Immediately afterward, the Duke of Alva sent an
invitation to Egmont to be the guest of honor at a banquet in his own
house. A servant from the palace that night delivered to the Count a
slip of paper, containing a warning to take the fleetest horse and flee
the city, and from that moment not to eat or sleep without pistols at
his hand. To all this Egmont responded that no monster ever lived who
could, with an invitation of hospitality, trick a patriot. Like a brave
man, the Count went to the Duke's palace. He found the guests assembled,
but when he had handed his hat and cloak to the servant, Alva gave a
sign, and from behind the curtains came Spanish musqueteers, who
demanded his sword. For instead of a banquet hall, the Count was taken
to a cellar, fitted up as a dungeon. Already Egmont had all but died for
his country. He had used his ships, his trade, his gold, for righting
the people's wrongs. He was a man of a large family--a wife and eleven
children--and people loved him as to idolatry. But Alva was inexorable.
He had made up his mind that the merchants and burghers had still much
hidden gold, and if he killed their bravest and best, terror would fall
upon all alike, and that the gold he needed would be forthcoming. That
all the people might witness the scene, he took his prisoners to
Brussels and decided to behead them in the public sq