A moment after De Vriendt, staggering, reeling, surrounded by his friends, gets to the fresh air of the street, which gives him new strength. Assisted by his six pupils, who will take him home and put him to bed and nurse him after his drunken bout, he cries: “Ho! for another stoup of Rhine wine, strong Rhine wine, landlord of the Painted Inn!” and putting one foot in the stirrup, quaffs down a mighty libation to his defeated ones. Then he rides reeling to his palace on the street named after him, surrounded by happy creditors, who think if Floris lives he will paint more pictures and pay some of his debts. The crowd, as it surges about, gives very little attention to the Drunkards of Brussels, save one who indulges in a sly kick or two at the recumbent forms that have lost him his money; but almost as he fell Guy and Oliver have taken De Guerra, who is breathing heavily, and borne him to an adjoining room. Here hastily opening his doublet the painter slips his hand in, and sewn between the linings of his garments he feels a little packet. Ripping this out, he whispers, as he examines it, “Thank God! the six letters from Louis of Nassau!” A moment after, Guy, putting his hand upon the breast of the Spaniard, mutters: “The spy is dead.” And a great, deep-drawn breath of relief comes from the Fleming—this one of his many dangers has died with Vasco de Guerra. The color has returned to his face, and he laughs: “It was your lucky coming and the pigeon pie that saved me—for a little while—my friend, my Guido!” The two go out together, and on the street Oliver again looks serious and mutters: “Alva! Here before his time. He was not to arrive till evening. What has brought him so suddenly from Brussels?” For a cavalcade is prancing up the street; thirty horsemen armored in steel with long lances bearing the pennon of Vargas. Before these, upon a strong Andalusian charger, rides a man of spare but very tall stature, in complete, glistening, gold-embossed Milan armor. Over the gorget about his neck is the ribbon of the Golden Fleece upon which hangs the Lamb of God, the insignia of that Order. This is covered by a long sable, silvered beard that falls in two peculiar pointed locks upon his breast, his dark hair cut short, is likewise grizzled; so is his mustache, which drapes peculiar lips, the upper thin, firm and determined; the lower sensual—but determined also; his forehead high, pale, blue-veined and strangely intellectual, that of the military mathematician; his nose aquiline and of rare beauty, keen cut, precise, immovable, his cheeks sallow and pallid—altogether a face cold as death, lighted by two blazing, sparkling, unflinching, serpent’s eyes, and yet at times in certain features so like the woman that made Guy’s heart beat with love the night before that he knows it is her father, and murmurs: “Alva!”