Great was the enthusiasm of the burghers, and they set about pitching tents in the _Grande Place_, for the weather was bitterly cold, and they were determined to remain under arms until all danger was past. In the midst came news that Maximilian had fled, news which turned out to be false, but in order to calm the people the burghers invited him to show himself among them, and presently he appeared in the market-place, gorgeously arrayed in cloth of gold and seated on a magnificent charger. Nor did he meet with a lukewarm reception; the people cheered him to the echo. Their hatred was for the moment transferred to the members of his council. Whereat Maximilian, no doubt relieved, made them a speech: he had no thought of leaving Bruges; if they doubted his word, let them set a watch at the palace. The burghers, who were practical men, replied that they would consider his proposal, and at the end of half an hour informed him that the deputies of the three _bonnes villes_ were just about to meet, and that while they were discussing matters it would be well for him to take up his abode in the Craenenburg. The Craenenburg was at this time the property of Hendrieck Nieulandt, a merchant of great wealth, to whom Maximilian was heavily indebted. It was situated at the corner of the _rue St. Amand_, and was the most magnificent private residence in the market-place. From its balcony the Counts of Flanders were wont to witness the public games and festivities which so frequently delighted the citizens of Bruges, and there Maximilian had himself been diverted, some three weeks before, by the squeaks and grunts and ungainly bounds of a herd of frantic swine, and the no less uncouth shouts and falls of the blind sportsmen who were pursuing them. Not a very edifying spectacle, one would think, for a prince who longed for and afterwards grasped an imperial diadem, and who would, if he could, have put on his finger the ring of the fisherman. But, other times other manners, and let us never forget, as a recent writer aptly and pithily has it, 'Notre ancêtre du moyen âge est un grand enfant, il s'amuse aux choses extraordinaires pullulant aux pays lointains, et par dessous tout ... il est grossièrement joyeux.' He was all that certainly in Bruges at the close of the fourteen hundreds, and perhaps his descendants in the same city are all that to-day.