Holy Catholic Church by his conduct in Flanders. Therefore the Duke condemned him to be executed by the sword on the following day, and decreed that his head should be placed on high in a public place, there to remain until the Duke should otherwise direct. The sentence against Count Horn was similar in language and purport. That afternoon the Duke sent for the Bishop of Ypres, The prelate arrived at dusk. As soon as he presented himself, Alva informed him of the sentence which had just been pronounced, and ordered him to convey the intelligence to the prisoners. He further charged him with the duty of shriving the victims, and preparing their souls for death. The bishop fell on his knees, aghast at the terrible decree. He implored the Governor-General to have mercy upon the two unfortunate nobles. If their lives could not be spared, he prayed him at any rate to grant delay. With tears and earnest supplications the prelate endeavored to avert or to postpone the doom which had been pronounced. It was in vain. The sentence, inflexible as destiny, had been long before ordained. Its execution had been but hastened by the temporary triumph of rebellion in Friesland. Alva told the Bishop roughly that he had not been summoned to give advice. Delay or pardon was alike impossible. He was to act as confessor to the criminals, not as councillor to the Viceroy. The Bishop, thus rebuked, withdrew to accomplish his melancholy mission. Meanwhile, on the same evening, the miserable Countess of Egmont had been appalled by rumors, too vague for belief, too terrible to be slighted. She was in the chamber of Countess Aremberg, with whom she had come to condole for the death of the Count, when the order for the immediate execution of her own husband was announced to her. She hastened to the presence of the Governor-General. The Princess Palatine, whose ancestors had been emperors, remembered only that she was a wife and a mother. She fell at the feet of the man who controlled the fate of her husband, and implored his mercy in humble and submissive terms. The Duke, with calm and almost incredible irony, reassured the Countess by the information that, on the morrow, her husband was certainly to be released. With this ambiguous phrase, worthy the paltering oracles of antiquity, the wretched woman was obliged to withdraw. Too soon afterward the horrible truth of the words was revealed to her--words of doom, which she had mistaken for consolation.