n all these years to refresh, for a few days outside this town, my
troubled spirit after such perpetual work, intolerable cares, and
slavery, having had no other pleasure allotted me than with daily
sadness, weeping eyes, and heavy yearnings to tread the ramparts, and,
like a poor slave laden with fetters, to look at so many others sailing
out of the harbour in order to feast their souls in other provinces with
green fields and the goodly works of God. And thus it has been until it
has nearly gone out of my memory how the fruits of the earth, growing
trees, and dumb beasts appear to mortal eye."

He then, with whimsical indignation, alludes to a certain author who
pleaded in excuse for the shortcomings of the history of the siege the
damage done to his manuscripts by a cannon-ball. "Where the liar dreamt
of or invented his cannon-ball," he says, "I cannot tell, inasmuch as he
never saw the city of Ostend in his life; but the said cannon-ball, to my
great sorrrow, did come one afternoon through my office, shot from the
enemy's great battery, which very much damaged not his memoirs but mine;
taking off the legs and arms at the same time of three poor invalid
soldiers seated in the sun before my door and killing them on the spot,
and just missing my wife, then great with child, who stood by me with
faithfulness through all the sufferings of the bloody siege and presented
me twice during its continuance, by the help of Almighty God, with young
Amazons or daughters of war."

And so honest Philip Fleming went out for a little time to look at the
green trees and the dumb creatures feeding in the Dutch pastures.
Meantime the two armies--outside and within Ostend--went moiling on in
their monotonous work; steadily returning at intervals, as if by
instinct, to repair the ruin which a superior power would often inflict
in a half-hour on the results of laborious weeks.

In the open field the military operations were very trifling, the wager
of battle being by common consent fought out on the sands of Ostend, and
the necessities for attack and defence absorbing, the resources of each
combatant. France, England, and Spain were holding a perpetual diplomatic
tournament to which our eyes must presently turn, and the Sublime Realm
of the Ottoman and the holy Roman Empire were in the customary
equilibrium of their eternal strife.

The mutiny of the veterans continued; the "Italian republic" giving the
archduke almost as much trouble,