On the 13th February all these charters were solemnly read in the market-place at Bruges, as well as the text of the Treaty of Arras, and a long report on the attempted destruction of the city, whereat the guildsmen wax furious, break into Maximilian's palace--the Princenhof--find there four hundred barrels of gunpowder, scaling ladders innumerable, and something more ominous still, coils upon coils of stout rope. What was this for? Not a man of them but believed that the Duke had meant to hang him. Next day, in consequence, arrest of fourteen privy councillors, Flemings, Burgundians, Germans, four of them in Maximilian's own chamber. All of these men had fancied themselves safe because they were attached to the royal person. The same evening a deputation of burghers pay Maximilian a visit of condolence, bid him take heart, and assure him that they bear _him_ no enmity; that his person is perfectly safe in their hands, and that they are ready to do anything in their power to make him comfortable. Maximilian, nevertheless, unconvinced and exceedingly depressed. February 16, commencement of trial of Jan van Nieuwenhove and sundry others arrested the day before. Great deliberation on the part of the judges who, sitting with closed doors, have already spun out the proceedings for two days, when the mob outside, losing all patience and frantically shouting that the judges have gone [Illustration: Hôtel Gruthuise] to sleep and it is time to awaken them, break into the Court House, drag the accused forth into the market-place, and presently bring hither the rack. On the evening of February 17, Carnival. Hell let loose:--a weird farrago of gibbering masks, and wailing ghosts, and gorgeous dresses; a veritable pandemonium of obscene songs and lecherous yells and hysterical laughter; a drunken whirlwind of mad furies shrieking vengeance, whilst, to the strains of delirious music, they wildly dance around the headsman's block and bloody axe, and, a still ghastlier thing, a rack of new and improved fashion, which has never yet been used, but soon will be, set out in grim array before the Halles. Suddenly the air grows thick with smoke, the Belfry gleams out roseate against the black sky, and great tongues of flame dart up to heaven. Somehow or other the venders of fruit and fried fish and cheap finery have managed to fire their booths, and thus, during the small hours of Ash-Wednesday morning, the fierce orgies are fittingly brought to a close with a fiercer conflagration.