"You refuse?" retorted Alva. "For two days and a night ye have raised your arms against your lawful King. If you fight to-morrow you will add sacrilege to your other crimes."
"And thou, treachery to thine!" said van Rycke boldly. "Whence this desire to keep holy the Sabbath day, tyrant? Wouldst thou have ceased to destroy, to pillage or to outrage this day if we had not raised our arms in our own defence?"
"Well said, van Rycke!" cried the Orangists.
"The immortal souls which your obstinacy would send to hell," said the Duke of Alva, "will return and haunt you till they drag you back with them."
"Can you not pray in your Kasteel?" retorted Mark.
"We have no priest to say Mass for us."
"We will send you one."
"We have no consecrated chapel."
"The priest will say Mass in your castle-yard, beneath the consecrated dome of heaven. The Walloon prisoners whom we have taken are receiving the ministry of our priests in the guild-houses where they are held."
"Nay! but such makeshift would not satisfy the children of Spain who are also the chosen children of the Church. But," continued Alva with a sudden assumption of indifference, "I have made my proposal. Take it or not as ye list. But remember this: the dead who lie unburied in your streets will have their revenge. Pestilence and disease will sweep your city of your children, as soon as we have vanquished your men."