eed had so well deserved." This was accordingly
done, and the excellent parents, ennobled and enriched by the crime of
their son, received, instead of the twenty-five thousand crowns promised
in the Ban, the three seigniories of Livermont, Hostal, and Dampmartin,
in the Franche Comte, and took their place at once among the landed
aristocracy. Thus the bounty of the Prince had furnished the weapon by
which his life was destroyed, and his estates supplied the fund out of
which the assassin's family received the price of blood. At a later day,
when the unfortunate eldest son of Orange returned from Spain after
twenty-seven years' absence, a changeling and a Spaniard, the
restoration of those very estates was offered to him by Philip II
provided he would continue to pay a fixed proportion of their rents to
the family of his father's murderer. The education which Philip William
had received, under the King's auspices, had, however, not entirely
destroyed all his human feelings and he rejected the proposal with
scorn. The estates remained with the Gerard family, and the patents of
nobility which they had received were used to justify their exemption
from certain taxes, until the union of Franche-Comte with France, when a
French governor tore the documents in pieces and trampled them under
foot.

The life and labors of Orange had established the emancipated
commonwealth upon a secure foundation, but his death rendered the union
of all the Netherlands into one republic hopeless. The efforts of the
malcontent nobles, the religious discord, the consummate ability, both
political and military, of Parma, all combined with the lamentable loss
of William the Silent to separate forever the Southern and Catholic
provinces from the Northern confederacy. So long as the Prince remained
alive, he was the father of the whole country, the Netherlands--saving
only two Walloon provinces--constituting a whole. Notwithstanding the
spirit of faction and the blight of the long civil war, there was at
least one country, or the hope of a country, one strong heart, one
guiding head, for the patriotic party throughout the land. Philip and
Granvella were right in their estimate of the advantage to be derived
from the Prince's death; in believing that an assassin's hand could
achieve more than all the wiles which Spanish or Italian statesmanship
could teach, or all the armies which Spain or Italy could muster. The
pistol of the insignificant Gerard dest