"As in the course of human affairs," says Schiller, "here a licentious luxury followed prosperity. The seductive example of Philip the Good could not but accelerate its approach. The court of the Burgundian dukes was the most voluptuous and magnificent in Europe, Italy itself not accepted. The costly dress of the higher classes, which afterwards served as patterns to the Spaniards, and eventually with the Burgundian customs, passed over to the court of Austria, soon descended to the lower orders, and the humblest citizen nursed his person in velvet and silk. The pomp and vanity of dress were carried by both sexes to extravagance. The luxury of the table had never reached so great a height among any other people. The immoral assemblage of both sexes at bathing-places, and others of reunion for pleasure and enjoyment, had banished all shame." This state of society was new and bewildering to the plain soldier, who had come from the hardy and frugal land of the "rough-footed Scots," as he strolled along the thoroughfares of Bommel, disguised as a merchant from Muscovy, without a word of the Muscovite language, and as ignorant of whether he should pretend to import tallow, tar, hogsbristles, iron and flax, or the preserved fruits and luscious wines of the sunny Levant. Thus fearing that his disguise might lead him into a scrape or predicament, he avoided the harbour and mercantile portions of the city, and sought those in which he was most likely to meet some of the earl's train, or discover his locality. After two days of hopeless inquiry, as the most prudent people are at times the most rash, he conceived the idea of relinquishing his disguise, of resuming his former attire, and applying to the Dyck Graf, who was a Gueldrian noble, and by birth a Burgundian of high rank, when luckily chance threw in his way the most fortunate person he could have met. He had visited all the churches in time of mass and vespers, hoping to see the earl, or some of his numerous retinue, and on the third day, just as he was leaving, with a heavy heart, the gorgeously-carved porch of St. Genevieve, he heard a familiar voice say-- "Yes, yes, it is all very bad and wicked of the Burgundians no doubt; but are not all the world so? When, through my humble efforts and the agency of our Holy Father, the great master of evil is purified and restored to the place he fell from, such things shall be no more. _Veritas mea et misericordia mea cum ipso; et in nomine meo exaltabitur cornuejus!_"