“What would ye, my friends?” he said. “Why do ye murmur that we do not break our vows and surrender the city to the Spaniards?--a fate more horrible than the agony which she now endures. I tell you that I have made an oath to hold the city, and may God give me strength to keep my oath! I can die but once; whether by your hands, the enemy’s, or by the hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to me. Not so that of the city intrusted to my care. I know that we shall starve if not soon relieved; but starvation is preferable to the dishonored fate which is the only alternative. Your menaces move me not. My life is at your disposal. Here is my sword; plunge it into my breast and divide my flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hunger, but expect no surrender so long as I remain alive.” How the populace of Leyden, after listening to this, rushed to the ramparts with renewed courage engendered within them and hurled defiance in the teeth of the bloodthirsty Spaniards; how as many as 8,000 died in the streets from the plague alone, germinated by the foulness of the beleaguered city; how the frantic people stripped even the leaves from the trees to relieve their hunger and fought over the garbage pits for every possible morsel of food; how at last a violent equinoctial gale on the first two days of October filled the lowland with water and floated the stranded fleet; how this fleet sailed in between the trees and the chimney pots of submerged farmhouses, putting the Spaniards to flight as it advanced; and how, on the morning of the 3rd of October, the Dutch ships, under Admiral Boisot, paddled up the canals of Leyden while the stricken citizens gathered on the banks and tried to shout with wild delight, but could not on account of their emaciated condition--are all matters of historical fact that may be perused in detail in the pages of any authoritative work on the rise of the Dutch Republic. It is also an historical fact that on the very next day after the relief of Leyden the gale shifted and blew with all its fury from the northeast, driving out the waters before it, so that within a few days the country was as it had been before and the labor of repairing the dikes commenced forthwith. As a reward for the sufferings of the people of Leyden the city was granted an annual fair of ten days with exemption from taxes and the States caused the university to be established. The University of Leyden doesn’t look much like our idea of a university, for the professors, except those in the department of medicine, teach their classes at home, the nine hundred students live in the town, and, as a result, dormitories and classrooms are things that may be dispensed with. The old “university building,” however, originally a nunnery, maintains in its connection one of the finest libraries in Holland.