These strange mechanical toys were much in vogue in the fourteen and fifteen hundreds, and some of them have come down to us--'the oldest citizen of Brussels, the famous "mannikin" of the _Rue de l'Etuve_ is still doing what he did in the days of Philippe l'Asseuré.' Never before in the course of its history had the city of Brussels been so prosperous. Within the circuit of its ramparts now dwelt some sixty thousand souls--more than double the population of Louvain, and nearly double that of Antwerp. If Brussels were not the richest city in the Netherlands, it was at all events the city where the evidences of wealth were the most visible, and amongst them dissipation. When men can afford to indulge the wayward humours of 'Brother Ass' they not unfrequently do so, and the men of Brussels at this time rode him with an exceedingly loose rein. They drank of the joys of life to the dregs, and some of them were nauseated: suicides were more frequent than of yore, and so were religious vocations. But it was not only by reason of human frailty that Brussels at this time sinned: the days which had passed had unchained a devil which still continued to haunt the town, albeit those evil days were now but a memory. The wars in which so many of the inhabitants had taken an active part, and the deeds of violence which had so often accompanied the revolutions and counter-revolutions incident on the struggle for freedom in almost all the great cities, had accustomed the people to horrors, and bred in their hearts a veritable lust for blood. Hence when strife arose the sequel was often death in some shape or other, and the chief effect which these crimes produced on public opinion was to fill men's minds with a morbid and universal dread of poison and of the assassin's knife. No one knew whom he could trust, friend looked askance at friend, and sturdy burghers abroad at night turned cold as they passed dark corners. The highest in the land were commonly believed to have had recourse to these methods in order to rid themselves of foes, or of friends whose existence was a bar to the realisation of their desires, and though these rumours were often groundless, the fact that they should have been so widely credited, and that those whose fair names were sullied by them should have in consequence fallen so little in popular estimation is in itself significant, and so, too, is what Chastelain says concerning a repast of which Duke Philip once partook in the hut of a peasant. Riding alone and at night from Brussels towards Hal he had lost his way in the Forest of Soignes, and the man in whose house he took refuge believed him to be an ordinary wayfarer; the meal which was set before him was a very humble one--cheese, black bread and onions--but at least 'he ate,' old Chastelain notes, 'without fear of poison.'