glacier electric speed.

Midsummer had arrived. The period in which peace was to be made or
abandoned altogether had passed. Jeannin had returned from his visit to
Paris; the Danish envoys, sent to watch the negotiations, had left the
Hague, utterly disgusted with a puppet-show, all the strings of which,
they protested, were pulled from the Louvre. Brother John, exasperated
by the superhuman delays, fell sick of a fever at Burgos, and was sent,
on his recovery, to the court at Valladolid to be made ill again by the
same cause, and still there came no sound from the Government of Spain.

At last the silence was broken. Something that was called the voice of
the king reached the ears of the archduke. Long had he wrestled in
prayer on this great subject, said Philip III., fervently had he besought
the Omnipotent for light. He had now persuaded himself that he should
not fulfil his duty to God, nor satisfy his own strong desire for
maintaining the Catholic faith, nor preserve his self-respect, if he now
conceded his supreme right to the Confederated Provinces at any other
price than the uncontrolled exercise, within their borders, of the
Catholic religion. He wished, therefore, as obedient son of the Church
and Defender of the Faith, to fulfil this primary duty, untrammelled by
any human consideration, by any profit that might induce him towards a
contrary course. That which he had on other occasions more than once
signified he now confirmed. His mind was fixed; this was his last and
immutable determination, that if the confederates should permit the free
and public exercise of the Catholic, Roman, Apostolic religion to all
such as wished to live and die in it, for this cause so grateful to God,
and for no other reason, he also would permit to them that supreme right
over the provinces, and that authority which now belonged to himself.
Natives and residents of those countries should enjoy liberty, just so