nd
imprisonment, or, if tainted with suspicion of heresy, the fagot or the
sword, but for the rich every thing was attainable. Pardons for the most
atrocious crimes, passports, safe conducts, offices of trust and honor,
were disposed of at auction to the highest bidder. Against all this sea
of corruption did the brave William of Orange set his breast, undaunted
and unflinching. Of all the conspicuous men in the land, he was the only
one whose worst enemy had never hinted through the whole course of his
public career, that his hands had known contamination. His honor was ever
untarnished by even a breath of suspicion. The Cardinal could accuse him
of pecuniary embarrassment, by which a large proportion of his revenues
were necessarily diverted to the liquidation of his debts, but he could
not suggest that the Prince had ever freed himself from difficulties by
plunging his hands into the public treasury, when it might easily have
been opened to him.

It was soon, however, sufficiently obvious that as desperate a struggle
was to be made with the many-headed monster of general corruption as with
the Cardinal by whom it had been so long fed and governed. The Prince was
accused of ambition and intrigue. It was said that he was determined to
concentrate all the powers of government in the state council, which was
thus to become an omnipotent and irresponsible senate, while the King
would be reduced to the condition of a Venetian Doge. It was, of course,
suggested that it was the aim of Orange to govern the new Tribunal of
Ten. No doubt the Prince was ambitious. Birth, wealth, genius, and virtue
could not have been bestowed in such eminent degree on any man without
carrying with them the determination to assert their value. It was not
his wish so much as it was the necessary law of his being to impress
himself upon his age and to rule his fellow-men. But he practised no arts
to arrive at the supremacy which he felt must always belong to him, what
ever might be his nominal position in the political hierarchy. He was
already, although but just turned of thirty years, vastly changed from
the brilliant and careless grandee, as he stood at the hour of the
imperial abdication. He was becoming careworn in face, thin of figure,
sleepless of habit. The wrongs of which he was the daily witness, the
absolutism, the cruelty, the rottenness of the government, had marked his
face with premature furrows. "They say that the Prince is very sad,"