The crowd began to tear the tapestries from the walls, to drag down the pictures and slash them with knives, to knock over the images, and hurl the statues from the niches.
Duprès drew his breath sharply, his head began to reel at the sight of this fury of desecration; then a lust, a madness, an exaltation crept into his veins; he sprang out from his hiding-place and drew the stout cudgel he kept at his belt.
For once the Reformers were in power, for once there was no creature of Philip's to protect Philip's God—the Romish Church which had persecuted the heretics so unfalteringly, so bitterly, so persistently, had now no champion here to protect her temple.
A woman whose red hair fell on a white neck and rough kerchief leapt up the altar steps, dashed open the golden doors of the sanctuary with her fists, dragged out the Eucharist, and flung it down to be trampled under foot; a number of youths sprang to her side, and in a moment the altar was cleared of all the costly furniture.
A great and extreme fury now seized the rioters; it was as if they would revenge on the Papists' church all the blood the Papists had shed, all the misery they had caused; there were fifty thousand executions in the Netherlands to be remembered against the Romish Church.
The magistrates came down once more to the cathedral, but on hearing the terrible, almost inhuman, noise that issued from the building, they fled back to the town hall without attempting an entrance.
It was now so dark in the church, that the women took the lamps and candles from the altars and lit the men at their work; the beautiful column supporting the repository was shattered under a hundred blows; as arch on arch, pillar on pillar, crashed to the ground they were pounded with mallets into a thousand pieces.
Seventy chapels were utterly wrecked; there was not a picture nor a tapestry left in place; with incredible speed and incredible strength stone, marble, bronze, brass, wood were hurled down, broken, hammered, defaced.
The figures on the tombs were beaten out of all likeness to humanity, the banners were torn down and slit to shreds, knives and spears were driven into the mosaics and wall painting, fragments of alabaster were hurled through the gorgeous glass window. The inspiration, the labour, the riches of four hundred years were in a few hours destroyed; the incalculable wealth, the perfect flower of art which had come to perfection and could never be again, the industry, the patience of entire lives, the offerings of generations, the worshipped treasures of thousands—all these were, in the space of a few hours, reduced to utter ruin, to broken fragments, and tattered rags by those who saw nothing in what they destroyed but the symbols of a monstrous tyranny and the pageantry that disguised all cruelty and wickedness.
The madness got into Duprès' blood; he struck right and left, he shouted, he sang, he scaled up the pillars to strike down the sculptures above them; he dashed into the chapels to tear out the relics and leap on them; he split the painted panels of altar-pieces, and dug out the inlay and mosaic on the walls.