He had merely promised that the Catholic worship should not be prevented.
The difference between the terms of the request and the reply was sufficiently wide.
The consent to his journey was with difficulty accorded by the estates of Holland and Zealand, and his wife, with many tears and anxious forebodings, beheld him depart for a capital where the heads of his brave and powerful friends had fallen, and where still lurked so many of his deadly foes.

During his absence, prayers were offered daily for his safety in all the churches of Holland and Zealand, by command of the estates.
He arrived at Antwerp on the 17th of September, and was received with extraordinary enthusiasm.

The Prince, who had gone forth alone, without even a bodyguard, had the whole population of the great city for his buckler.

Here he spent five days, observing, with many a sigh, the melancholy changes which had taken place in the long interval of his absence.

The recent traces of the horrible "Fury," the blackened walls of the Hotel de Ville, the prostrate ruins of the marble streets, which he had known as the most imposing in Europe, could be hardly atoned for in his eyes even by the more grateful spectacle of the dismantled fortress.
On the 23rd of September he was attended by a vast concourse of citizens to the new canal which led to Brussels, where three barges were in waiting for himself and suite.