ormous mass of pleadings, replies,
replications, rejoinders, and apostilles was the result, which few eyes
were destined to read, and least of all those to whom they were nominally
addressed. They were of benefit to none save in the shape of fees which
they engendered to the gentlemen of the robe. It was six months, however,
before the case was closed. As there was no blood to be shed, a summary
process was not considered necessary. At last, on the 14th July, the
voluminous pile of documents was placed before Vargas. It was the first
time he had laid eyes upon them, and they were, moreover, written in a
language of which he did not understand a word. Such, however, was his
capacity for affairs, that a glance only at the outside of the case
enabled him to form his decision. Within half an hour afterwards, booted
and spurred, he was saying mass in the church of Saint Gudule, on his way
to pronounce sentence at Antwerp. That judgment was rendered the same
day, and confirmed the preceding act of condemnation. Vargas went to his
task as cheerfully as if it had been murder. The act of outlawry and
beggary was fulminated against the city and province, and a handsome
amount of misery for others, and of plunder for himself, was the result
of his promptness. Many thousand citizens were ruined, many millions of
property confiscated.

Thus was Utrecht deprived of all its ancient liberties, as a punishment
for having dared to maintain them. The clergy, too, of the province,
having invoked the bull "in Coena Domini," by which clerical property was
declared exempt from taxation, had excited the wrath of the Duke. To
wield so slight a bulrush against the man who had just been girded with
the consecrated and jewelled sword of the Pope, was indeed but a feeble
attempt at defence. Alva treated the Coena Domini with contempt, but he
imprisoned the printer who had dared to-republish it at this juncture.
Finding, moreover, that it had been put in press by the orders of no less
a person than Secretary La Torre, he threw that officer also into prison,
besides suspending him from his functions for a year.

The estates of the province and the magistracy of the city appealed to
his Majesty from the decision of the Duke. The case did not directly
concern the interests of religion, for although the heretical troubles of
1566 furnished the nominal motives of the condemnation, the resistance to
the tenth and twentieth penny was the real crime for whi