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Not a suspicion of the governor's intention had got abroad until the morning of the eventful day. His action was looked upon as a defiance of public sentiment; the popular mind was already violently excited, and consequences of the direst kind followed.
The newspapers and illustrated weeklies raged about her for a while, elaborated the story of her struggles, the mysterious remittances which had, from time to time, saved her from direst poverty, her ambition, her education which, by dint of hard work, she had acquired. It was all very puzzling and interesting and romantic. For what purpose had she been stolen, and by whom?
On one of Motley's most glowing pages, we are told how, after the frightful siege and fall of Haarlem, and with Alkmaar closely invested by the Duke of Alva, when the cause of the Netherlands seemed in direst straits, Diedrich Sonoy, the lieutenant governor of North Holland, wrote the Prince of Orange, inquiring whether he had arranged some foreign alliance, and received the reply: "You ask if I have entered into a firm treaty with any great king or potentate; to which I answer, that before I ever took up the cause of the oppressed Christians in these provinces, I had entered into a close alliance with the King of kings; and I am firmly convinced that all who put their trust in Him shall be saved by His almighty hand.
The furious populace has stormed his palace, Where a whole arsenal of arms was found; Should he be found, they'll tear him limb from limb, Conceal him till the fury is abated You answer for his life. AUBESPINE. I go I leave This kingdom where they sport with public treaties And trample on the laws of nations. Yet My monarch, be assured, will vent his rage In direst vengeance!
Bloody religious wars came after he was dead, the prospect of which filled his soul with horror, and to which he could hardly give consent even in case of direst necessity for self-defence; but it is a transcendent fact that while he lived they were held in abeyance, most of all by his prayers and endeavors.
And, as he looked, a host of spectral faces seemed to rise whitely out of the flames and wonder at him! ... faces that were solemn, wistful, warning, and beseeching by turns! ... they drifted through the fire and smiled, and wept, and vanished, to reappear again and yet again! ... and as, with painfully beating heart, he strove to combat the terror that seized him at this strange spectacular delusion, all suddenly the heavy wreaths of smoke that had till now hung over the Inner Shrine of Nagaya parted like drapery drawn aside from a picture.. and for a brief breathing space of direst agony he saw Lysia once more, Lysia, in a torture as horrible as any ever depicted in a bigot's idea of his enemy's Hell!
The leaders in the cities, each provided with the fairest professions, on the one side with the cry of political equality of the people, on the other of a moderate aristocracy, sought prizes for themselves in those public interests which they pretended to cherish, and, recoiling from no means in their struggles for ascendancy engaged in the direst excesses; in their acts of vengeance they went to even greater lengths, not stopping at what justice or the good of the state demanded, but making the party caprice of the moment their only standard, and invoking with equal readiness the condemnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the strong arm to glut the animosities of the hour.
They put forward the plea that the legislature had no right to alter a royal charter, that to do so was an interference with the royal prerogative, and that the direst consequence would ensue if the constitution of the college was changed. According to their view, a royal charter once granted, the king himself, even with the assistance of both branches of the legislature, could not amend it.
He even sent an express to the besiegers of Genoa to retire on Alessandria; but negotiations had been opened with Masséna for the surrender of that stronghold, and the opinion of Lord Keith, the English admiral, decided the Austrian commander there to press the siege to the very end. The city was in the direst straits.
Men steeped in antique learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of toil.
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