manner business was by no means neglected; the negotiations for the
surrender of the city being conducted on both sides with a fuddled
solemnity very edifying for the attendants to contemplate.

Vere complained that the archduke was unreasonable, for he claimed
nothing less from his antagonists than their all. The commissioners
replied that all was no more than his own property. It certainly could
not be thought unjust of him to demand his own, and all Flanders was his
by legal donation from his Majesty of Spain. Vere replied that he had
never studied jurisprudence, and was not versed at all in that--science,
but he had always heard in England that possession was nine points of the
law. Now it so happened that they, and not his Highness, were in
possession of Ostend, and it would be unreasonable to expect them to make
a present of it to any one. The besiegers, he urged, had gained much
honour by their steady persistence amid so many dangers; difficulties,
and losses;--but winter had come, the weather was very bad, not a step of
progress had been made, and he was bold enough to express his opinion
that it would be far more sensible on the part of his Highness, after
such deeds of valour, to withdraw his diminished forces out of the
freezing and pestilential swamps before Ostend and go into comfortable
winter-quarters at Ghent or Bruges. Enough had been done for glory, and
it must certainly now be manifest that he had no chance of taking the
city.

Serrano retorted that it was no secret to the besiegers that the garrison
had dwindled to a handful; that it was quite impossible for them to
defend their outer works any longer; that with the loss of the external
boulevard the defence of the place would be impossible, and that, on the
contrary, it was for the republicans to resign themselves to their fate.
They, too, had done enough for glory, and had nothing for it but to