owardice before the enemy, and charged with the
assassination of a wife whom he adored, sometimes regarded with
distrust, slandered, and attacked by the very people he was
defending,--he bore it all patiently and in silence. He did not swerve
from the straight course to the goal, facing infinite perils with
quiet courage. He did not bend before his people nor did he flatter
them; he did not permit himself to be led away by the passions of his
country; it was he who always guided; he was always at the head,
always the first. All gathered around him; he was the mind, the
conscience, and the strength of the revolution, the hearth that burned
and kept the warmth of life in his fatherland. Great by reason alike
of his audacity and prudence, he continued upright in a time full of
perjury and treachery; he remained gentle in the midst of violent men;
his hands were spotless when all the courts of Europe were stained
with blood. With an army collected at random, with feeble or uncertain
allies, checked by internal discords between Lutherans and Calvinists,
nobles and commoners, magistrates and the people, with no great
general to aid him, he was obliged to combat the municipal spirit of
the provinces, which would none of his authority and escaped from his
control; yet he triumphed in a conflict which seemed beyond human
strength. He wore out the Duke of Alva, Requesens, Don John of
Austria, and Alexander Farnese. He overthrew the conspiracies of those
foreign princes who wished to help his country in order to subdue it.
He gained friends and obtained aid from every part of Europe, and,
after achieving one of the noblest revolutions in history, he founded
a free state in spite of an empire which was the terror of the
universe.

This man, who in the eyes of the world was so terrible and so great,
was an affectionate husband and father, a pleasant friend and
companion, who loved merry social gatherings and banquets, and was an
elegant and polite host. He was a man of learning, and spoke, besides
his native language, French, German, Spanish, Latin, and Italian, and
conversed in a scholarly manner on all subjects. Although called the
Silent (rather because he kept to himself the secret discovered at the
French court than from a habit of silence), he was one of the most
eloquent men of his time. His manners were simple and his dress plain;
he loved his people and was beloved by them. He walked about the
streets of the cities barehea