Already he gloated in anticipation over the havoc which would soon be let loose within those walls.

Such ravings, if invented by the pen of fiction, would seem a puerile caricature; proceeding, authentically, from his own, they still appear almost too exaggerated for belief.

'If I take Alkmaar,' he wrote to Philip, 'I am resolved not to leave a single creature alive; the knife shall be put to every throat.

Since the example of Harlem has proved of no use, _perhaps an example of cruelty_ will bring the other cities to their senses,' He took occasion also to read a lecture to the party of conciliation in Madrid, whose counsels, as he believed, his sovereign was beginning to heed.

Nothing, he maintained, could be more senseless than the idea of pardon and clemency.