All the entreaties of the Lady Mary, who, dressed in mourning garments, with dishevelled hair, unloosed girdle, and streaming eyes; appears at the town-house and afterwards in the market place, humbly to intercede for her servants, are fruitless There is no help for the juggling diplomatists.

The punishment was sharp.
Was it more severe and sudden than that which betrayed monarchs usually inflict?
Would the Flemings, at that critical moment, have deserved their freedom had they not taken swift and signal vengeance for this first infraction of their newly recognized rights?
Had it not been weakness to spare the traitors who had thus stained the childhood of the national joy at liberty regained?
IX.
Another step, and a wide one, into the great stream of European history.
The Lady Mary espouses the Archduke Maximilian.

The Netherlands are about to become Habsburg property.

The Ghenters reject the pretensions of the dauphin, and select for husband of their duchess the very man whom her father had so stupidly rejected.

It had been a wiser choice for Charles the Bold than for the Netherlanders.