fry when the belfry happens to be the pile of Notre Dame!"
"Absolutely," said Bergmans, approvingly. "And then, too, Antwerp will undergo a moral regeneration also. She will shake off the yoke that degrades her. She will be restored again to her true children. You will see it, Paridael; the oppressed masses are becoming insubordinate. I tell you that a new order will soon come into being! A breath of emancipation and youth has blown across the mob; there is something better here than a rich and proud city; there is a people no less interesting who are commencing to revolt against the representatives who do serve them badly and compromise them."
Bergmans' prediction was not long delayed in its realization. For a long time the air had been charged with electricity. Vyveloy's passionate cantata had contributed in no small measure to the reawakening of the population. The rich folk, in taking the initiative in a celebration in honor of Rubens, had not expected to raise up such a ferment. It happened that the painters of the Renaissance began to evoke the leaders of men of the sixteenth century, William the Silent, Mamix of Sainte-Aldegonde. They exhumed, an an ensign, the insulting epithet of the days of Charles V. and Philip II., the name of "gueux," which their valiant ancestors had been proud to bear as a badge of honor.
The mummified nobility, indifferent to all and ultra-mundane in addition, perhaps rejoiced at the dissension which the new current had in store for the upstarts, but did not dare to sponsor a party united under the name and the banner of the victorious adversaries of Catholic Spain.
