The nobles were but the gilded hands on the outside of the dial--the hour to strike was determined by the obscure but weighty movements within.
Nor is it, perhaps, always better to rely upon abstract phraseology, to produce a necessary impression.

Upon some minds, declamation concerning liberty of conscience and religious tyranny makes but a vague impression, while an effect may be produced upon them, for example by a dry, concrete, cynical entry in an account book, such as the following, taken at hazard from the register of municipal expenses at Tournay, during the years with which we are now occupied: "To Mr.Jacques Barra, executioner, for having tortured, twice, Jean de Lannoy, ten sous.
"To the same, for having executed, by fire, said Lannoy, sixty sous.
For having thrown his cinders into the river, eight sous." This was the treatment to which thousands, and tens of thousands, had been subjected in the provinces.

Men, women, and children were burned, and their "cinders" thrown away, for idle words against Rome, spoken years before, for praying alone in their closets, for not kneeling to a wafer when they met it in the streets, for thoughts to which they had never given utterance, but which, on inquiry, they were too honest to deny.

Certainly with this work going on year after year in every city in the Netherlands, and now set into renewed and vigorous action by a man who wore a crown only that he might the better torture his fellow-creatures, it was time that the very stones in the streets should be moved to mutiny.
Thus it may be seen of how much value were the protestations of Philip and of Granvelle, on which much stress has latterly been laid, that it was not their intention to introduce the Spanish inquisition.

With the edicts and the Netherland inquisition, such as we have described them, the step was hardly necessary.
In fact, the main difference between the two institutions consisted in the greater efficiency of the Spanish in discovering such of its victims as were disposed to deny their faith.