CHAPTER I
THE ALCHEMIST

Magister Gustave Vanderlinden, astrologer and alchemist to that great Protestant Prince, His Highness Augustus, Elector of Saxony, sat somewhat gloomily in the laboratory of his house at Leipsic.

It was August, and the sun fell merrily through the diamond panes of the casements on to the dusty and mysterious objects which filled the high and narrow chamber.

In one corner stood a large furnace with two ovens, a tripod and pot, and a wide chimney above; on the shelves near, on the ground, and on the fire were all manner of vessels and pots and retorts of glass, of porcelain, and of metal.

Near by stood a large quadrant, beautifully engraved, a huge celestial globe swung in a frame of polished ebony, a small telescope of brass and wood, and a little desk or table covered with curious objects such as compasses, a large portion of loadstone, several seals, drawings, diagrams, and charts.

The other end of the room was occupied by a large and fine clock of very exact workmanship, and two shelves of rare books and manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, English, French, German, and High Dutch.

Beyond, a door opened into an inner room stored with chemicals, vases, jars, and boxes in considerable confusion.

The owner of this apartment was a man in the prime of life, tall and spare, wearing a long, plain, frieze gown and a flat black velvet bonnet, round his neck hung a charm consisting of several Hebrew letters on a fine gold chain; his face was thin, and his expression discontented and weary.

He was, indeed, an unsatisfied man; though he held a good position at the Electoral Court, and the Elector never undertook any action without consulting his charts, it was neither in philosophy nor astrology that his interest lay. He was an alchemist, and his life was devoted to the magnum opus—the discovery of the wonderful stone which should heal all diseases, turn all metal to gold fairer than that found in the earth, and confer eternal youth—the secret of secrets of Aristotle, the goal of Hermetic philosophy.

He had traversed the greater part of Europe on this quest, and even travelled in the East, gaining much curious knowledge and meeting other Hermetic philosophers, but twenty years of wandering had brought him no nearer his object, and poverty had driven him to his native land and to the protection of the Elector.

Within the last few days an experiment which consisted of the combination of the essential mercury, silver, oil of olives, and sulphur—so many times distilled, rectified, dissolved, and fused, that the process had taken three years—had utterly failed in the final projections, and the baffled alchemist was struggling with a despair not unmixed with bitterness, the bitterness of the continued barrenness of his long, earnest, and painful labours.

He was roused from his weary, almost apathetic musings by one of his assistants coming to tell him the Elector was below. Vanderlinden rose with a sigh, pulled off his black cap, and went down into the humble parlour where His Highness waited.

"The experiment?" asked the Elector, as the philosopher entered his presence.

"It has failed, Highness," replied Vanderlinden; he very much disliked discussing with a layman the Great Act, the holy and mysterious science, but could not refuse to do so with the patron who supplied the money for these experiments. To his present relief the Elector made no further comment on the eternal search for the philosopher's stone; he merely shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, I did not come to talk of that," he said, "but of the wedding."

Vanderlinden repressed a sigh; there was no need to ask whose wedding his master referred to. To all Saxony, nay, to all Germany and the low countries, it was the wedding; it had been in debate for nearly three years, and during that period the Elector had consulted his astrologer so frequently on the likely success, failure, or general results of this union, that he had a whole cabinet of charts and diagrams by which the fortunes of the famous couple had been told according to every possible form of divination, and the chances, good and evil, of the marriage had been expounded in every possible way. Vanderlinden had discussed it, argued it with his master, drawn horoscopes of bride and groom, exhausted his skill in foretelling their future, and, therefore, he was heartily tired of the subject, and his spirits fell when he heard his master again introduce it. He wished the interview over and himself back at his books—he had suddenly recalled that in the works of Raymond Lully he had once seen a good formula for making the famous red and white powder which is the first step towards the stone itself—but he had to conceal his impatience, for the marriage was as important to the Elector as the magnum opus was to the philosopher.

"Yes," continued His Highness, "I wish to be further heartened, encouraged, and advised about this marriage."

He leant back in his chair and keenly looked at the alchemist. He was a fine knight of great bodily strength and pleasing appearance, his expression and manner conveyed force and dignity and a kind of candid simplicity; he was a strict Protestant according to the Augsburg Confession, and, amid the confusion of creeds that then bewildered men, he stood out clearly as one of the foremost Princes of Germany to defy the Pope and support the Reformed Faith; this was his great, perhaps his only, distinction.

"I wish you," he added thoughtfully, "to draw me another chart, and to once more try if the numbers promise good luck or ill."

"Nay," replied Vanderlinden hastily, "I have done all that is possible, Highness; it is but folly to again and again search for an answer to the same question. By no method I tried did I get a result—therefore this marriage will mean confusion, or else the future of it is hid from us."

The Elector was not satisfied with this ambiguous answer; he wanted a definite reply from his oracles, a direct announcement from the fates.

He sat a little while gloomily, his blunt-featured face overcast, meanwhile the alchemist standing patiently before him, fingering the flat black cap.

"You know well enough," remarked the Prince at length, "that if I could send some well-tested augury, some pleasant prophecy to the Landgrave of Hesse, it might overcome some of the bitterness of his opposition."

Vanderlinden doubted this; he had himself been sent as an envoy to Cassel with the mission of trying to persuade the old Landgrave to give his consent to this marriage that was so near the Elector's heart, and he had found Philip of Hesse extremely determined and not a little bigoted.

He ventured to say as much.

"I know," replied the Elector. "He has indeed made such a sturdy opposition that I have been tempted to wish him taken to his rest this last year."

"But why does Your Highness still trouble about the obstinacy of the Landgrave Philip when you have decided on the wedding, when the very cakes are being baked, the dresses made, and the groom is already on the road?" asked the alchemist wearily.

"I trouble," said His Highness, "because all the responsibility is mine, and it is no light responsibility to wed the daughter of the Elector Maurice to a Papist Prince."

Vanderlinden had heard the Elector say this many times before; he certainly thought that this match was about as incongruous as any could well be—an opinion shared by most of the Elector's subjects—for it meant uniting the Lady Anne, daughter of the Great Prince who had checked and humiliated Charles V, with a Romanist noble who had been page to that Emperor and was now high in favour with King Philip, his son; but the alchemist had, as did others, to bow to the reasons, personal and political, which had caused the Elector to urge on this marriage in face of the equally stern opposition of the Romish King of Spain and the Protestant Landgrave of Hesse—the grandfather and part guardian of the bride. He therefore took refuge in a vague answer—

"Your Highness has successfully overcome all difficulties, and there is little use in repenting at the last minute——"

"I do not repent," interrupted the Elector, rising and frowning, "but I have taken a great deal on myself, and in such matters it is ill to stand alone."

The alchemist had no consolation to offer, no advice to give, since both advice and consolation had long ago been exhausted. It seemed, too, mere weakness on the part of the Elector to still be torturing himself with doubts as to the wisdom of a marriage which could not now be prevented.

"Have you ready the talisman for the bride?" asked the Elector abruptly.

Vanderlinden drew from the pocket of his robe a box-wood case about an inch square, and gave it to his master.

The Prince opened it and took out the jewel it contained: this was a triangle of gold to represent the Trinity, inter-clasped by a green enamel serpent, symbol of eternity (since it had its tail in its mouth and therefore neither beginning nor end), in the middle of the convolutions of the reptile was a clear diamond (for purity) set on a little square of virgin gold which bore the Hebrew letters signifying "God Guard Thee."

The Elector turned the curious little jewel, which was carefully and beautifully fashioned, about in his strong soldier's fingers and examined it with an air of approval.

"God grant," he said, in a tone of sincerity, "that this keep her from Popish errors and follies; but it is difficult for a young maid to stand alone in a foreign country and not follow the ways of it, eh, Vanderlinden?"

He placed the little case in the embroidered purse that hung at his waist, gave the alchemist a preoccupied farewell, and left the house with a heavy step and a little click of his long gilded spurs. Vanderlinden waited until he heard the clang of His Highness's horse's hoofs over the cobbles, then he returned to his laboratory.

One of his assistants, young Hans Gottman, was leaning from the window watching the departure of the Elector, another was heating over the clear furnace some clay vases sealed with lead.

Vanderlinden caught Hans Gottman by the white apron.

"Fetch me the manuscripts of Rhasis, Alfarabi and Geber," he said. "They are locked in the chest in the still-room."

Young Hans withdrew his head and shoulders from the window.

"You know those sages by heart, master," he replied, half in irony, half in flattery.

"True," replied Vanderlinden, "but there may be something the meaning of which I have not completely understood, and it is very necessary that we start another experiment at once."

"The last cost thirteen thousand thalers," remarked the young man doubtfully.

The alchemist frowned away this unpleasant truth. "Bring me also," he said, "Le livre de la Philosophie Naturelle des MÉtaux of Bernard TrÉvisan, and the works of Raymond Lully."

But the young man still lingered; he was more interested in the world about him than in the science of his master.

"Did His Highness come about the marriage?" he asked.

The alchemist vented on his assistant the impatience he had concealed from the Prince.

"Am I never to hear the last of this marriage?" he cried. "I would the maid was wedded and gone, then maybe we should have a little peace in Leipsic."

"But it is a wicked thing," cried Hans, "to marry a Princess of the true faith to a Popish noble—a friend of King Philip, a friend of the Bishop of Arras—one who hates the Reformed Religion. I have some right to talk, master, for my father fought under the Elector Maurice against the late Emperor. Who thought then that the only child of the Elector would wed with the minion of the Emperor? A shame and a scandal it is to the country, and His Highness should be above sacrificing a young maid to the idolaters——"

Thus grumbling he went into the still-room to search for the manuscripts his master required. The other assistant, a stout young Burgundian, by name Walter de la Barre, had now brought his pots to the right heat and set them aside to cool.

He came forward, wiping his hands which were stained with clay and lead.

"Did the Elector command you to the feast, Magister?" he asked. "I heard to-day it was to be in the town hall, for the palace is not large enough—and all attending are to bring their own butlers and cooks and plate, and there is to be a three days' tourney——"

"Walter! Walter!" interrupted Vanderlinden sternly. "Is it a wonder that your metals will not fuse, your minerals dissolve, that your liquids turn, and your furnaces fall out when your head is full of such idleness as this?

"How often have I told you that it is the spirit and not the mind shall conquer in this pursuit of ours? Leave these worldly, silly things and fix your thoughts on the great mystery, the awful secret which God is pleased to withhold from us."

The young man flushed, and turned again to his furnace which he was keeping at white heat for the melting of more lead wherewith to seal a further row of pots containing a strange solution with which Vanderlinden was experimenting. Hans returned with the three rolls of manuscript and the book. The alchemist, with a severe injunction to them to keep up the furnace and refrain from idle speech, withdrew to his private chamber in the roof or gables, where he usually meditated and struggled with the problems he discovered in the mystical writings and oblique instructions, veiled hints and tortuous references of the ancient sages and masters.

The two young men, as soon as they were alone, at once went to the window and leant out, squeezing themselves together with some difficulty, for the casement was narrow.

The furnace made the chamber intolerably hot, and both sighed with relief at the comparative coolness of the summer breeze on their flushed faces.

Leipsic—roofs, gables, towers, spires—spread before them, pleasantly glimmering in the gold dust of the heat and softly outlined against the rich blue of the August sky.

There was an air of festival, of languor, of midsummer joyousness abroad, the little figures below in the street all looked as if they were making holiday; it seemed as if no one in the city was working, troubling, or grieving.

The two youths at the window sighed with contentment, rested the elbows of their stained sleeves on the warm sill, and forgot the furnace, the chemicals, the minerals, and all the materials of the vases, pots, and bottles in the chambers behind them.

"If I were a knight," said Hans, "I would offer myself as a champion to the Lady Anne to challenge this Romanist and rescue her from him. What would she be doing now, Walter—weeping perhaps?"

"Have you ever seen her?" asked the Burgundian.

"Never; she is kept close in the castle, poor soul."

"Well, it is a cruel thing," agreed Walter, "to exile a young girl from her home and her faith for some whim of policy no one understands."

"Nay, the reason is simple," replied Hans. "If the Lady Anne were to marry a German Prince who might put forward some claims, what of the Elector's position? whereas wedded to a great foreign noble she will give her uncle no trouble at all, at least so said Graf von Gebers to the master the other day, and he added he would not marry his daughter to a Papist to save his head, but then, as I said, the Elector is afraid——If the Lady Anne had been a man she would have had Saxony."

"But these great ones," remarked Walter, "they marry regardless of their faith."

"As to that," said Hans wisely, "all is confusion. A king will burn at the stake a subject who is of the true faith, yet take a Protestant to wife if it suits him. Who shall explain these great ones? But it is an ill thing," added the young man earnestly, "to ask a man to die for what he believes and then to wed his Princess to one of those who are his executioners. King Philip burns the Protestants whenever the Holy Inquisition can seize them, yet our Protestant Princess is to be wed to the friend of King Philip!"

"A question of policy," said the young Burgundian vaguely. "They always say that—State reasons—policy."

"I say it is a cursed marriage and one which God will not bless," returned the Lutheran with some heat.

"So declares the old Landgrave Philip," remarked Walter, "but what is the use? And we may as well see the festivities, I hear they are to cost a hundred thousand thalers—and a three days' tourney——"

"For the great ones—where will there be a place for you or I?"

"Oh, like enough we shall get on behind the rope as well as another. It would be a gracious thing to see the Elector tilt, and the Princess will be there in her grand dress—we must go——"

"The furnace!" cried the other with a start. "If we let that out we are not like to see much of the Lady Anne's wedding."

They withdrew their heads hastily from the window and applied themselves to the furnace, which was already beginning to turn a dead colour at the outside.

While these two young men bent their perspiring faces over the fire that was to be the womb (they hoped) of the philosopher's stone, and discussed the marriage of the Elector's ward, Philip of Spain in the Escorial, Margaret of Parma and the Bishop of Arras in Brussels, the old Landgrave of Hesse in Cassel, the Emperor in Vienna, and the King of France at the Louvre were all occupied, more or less completely, with this same marriage, for the groom was one of King Philip's most important subjects—his father's most intimate page and confidant, and also, in his own right, a person of unusual riches, power, and position, one of the first cavaliers of his age, an extremely popular noble, and a man already, in his first youth, distinguished as soldier and governor; therefore all these rulers and statesmen were so keenly considering his marriage.

The name of the bridegroom—a name obnoxious to the Lutherans of Germany as belonging to a great Papist noble—was William of Nassau, Prince of Orange.

When the Elector returned to the palace occupied by the Saxon Court during this stay in Leipsic, he was still engaged in considering the wisdom of this marriage of his ward.

He had striven for it during three years, and he had accomplished it in spite of King Philip, in spite of the Landgrave of Hesse, but now, on the eve of success, his heart misgave him.

True, there was no possible objection to the marriage from any worldly point of view. Anne of Saxony could not hope for any better match, and so the Elector had always argued. There remained also his strong personal reasons for getting the girl—whose sex alone prevented her from filling his place—out of the country with a husband whose interests did not lie in Germany. But there was always the one fact that troubled the conscience and vexed the repose of Augustus—the fact that had caused the old Landgrave Philip to withhold his consent and only bestow a very chary blessing on his granddaughter—she was to marry a Roman Catholic Prince, a friend of Philip, a one-time favourite of Charles; and the bridegroom's assurances that she should be allowed to practise according to the Augsburg Confession were extremely vague and unsatisfactory—indeed, he had stated that the Lutheran Princess would be expected to 'live Catholicly' when she took up her residence in the dominions of Philip of Spain.

However, it was a fine marriage, a brilliant marriage, a marriage eminently convenient to the Elector, and he endeavoured to stifle these late doubts and scruples.

As soon as he reached the palace he went in search of his niece that he might at once present her with the protective amulet, which was to preserve her from the snares and lures of Popery.

The rooms were overcrowded with people; everywhere was confusion and excitement. No one, from the scullions to the Electress, talked of anything but the wedding; preparations for receiving the guests, the coming and going of armourers, tailors, cooks, confectioners, filled the air with noise and bustle; the stewards and heralds were overwhelmed with work; loud disputes as to the arrangements for the feasts and tourneys echoed in the corridors; the pages and valets were too excited to be useful; and the women did nothing but chatter about clothes.

As the Elector made his way through the confusion and thought of the cost of his share in all this elaborate merry-making, he, too, began to be sick of this wedding, to wish it well over and his niece safely in the Netherlands.

He found the Lady Anne in the dark, lofty, antechamber of her apartments. Here the confusion of the palace had culminated, the whole room was strewn with dresses, hats, cloaks, and bales of stuff; waiting-women, serving-women, and tailors were running here and there displaying, explaining, and arranging their wares.

Near the tall, pointed Gothic window stood a structure of polished wood the shape of a gallows, and on this elegant gibbet hung several brilliantly dressed dolls, swinging by their necks like so many gay little corpses.

They were the models showing the bride the completed splendours of some of her bridal gowns, and she stood near them, pulling them out on their strings and examining them; the strong sunlight was over her and them and lying in a pool of gold at her feet.

Anne of Saxony, the heroine of this important and long-debated marriage, whose name was now in every one's mouth, and whose approaching union to a Papist noble had roused the compassionate chivalry of others beside Vanderlinden's two apprentices, was now sixteen years of age. Being the sole child of the great Elector Maurice, she would, if a boy, have been in the place her uncle now held. Connected by her mother's side with the Hesses, she was of the finest blood in Germany, and numbered most of the great families among her kinsmen; and her early orphanage, her high rank, the glory of her father's fame, and this famous marriage project had made of her a heroine in the eyes of Lutheran Germany.

The maiden who stood turning over the dressmaker's dolls looked, however, far from a heroine of any manner of romance.

She was of medium height, and her whole body was twisted, crooked in shoulder and hip; when she walked she halted in the fashion known in her country as the devil's limp; her figure was thin, undeveloped; her face pale, her features commonplace, save for the mouth, which was abnormally wide and loose though closed with a certain firmness; her eyes were light, large, and expressive; her hair dull, between brown and flaxen, and growing in a straight ugly fashion from her high brows.

In her whole person there was not one charm nor grace, ill-health had robbed her even of the bloom of her early youth, nor did her manners or her expression compensate for her defects; her gestures were awkward and ungraceful, her voice shrill, and her look conveyed the utmost arrogance and unbridled temper.

She was indeed both so unattractive and so unamiable, that the Elector had used her defects with the Landgrave as an argument to induce him to consent to her marriage.

"There will not be too many suitors for one crooked in mind and body," he had said, and, looking at her now as she stood eagerly snatching at the swinging dolls, his scruples and regrets at having found her a Papist husband banished in satisfaction at having found her any husband at all.

"Gracious uncle," said Anne, giving him a quick glance, "I am very much occupied."

Augustus took no notice of this rebuke, he was used to her curtness. She considered herself his superior, and her haughtiness, her tempers, and her unreasonableness had often caused the Electress to beseech her husband to hasten, at any cost, the marriage which would relieve them of her.

"I have brought you the jewel which Vanderlinden made for you," he said, and held out the little box-wood case.

Anne turned from the dolls and came forward with some interest. She wore a long gown of tawny coloured cloth, and a white lawn wimple; the heaviness of her attire added to her years but hardly disguised her deformity.

She took the jewel-case with hands that trembled a little, her lips were dry, her eyes bright, in her cheeks an unusual flush showed; excitement burnt her like a fever, her whole poor distorted body was quivering.

The Elector saw this, and a strange sort of pity for his brother's only child touched him; after all she was but a girl, and this was three days before her wedding.

"Dear niece," he said, putting his great hand gently on her crooked shoulder, "may that amulet preserve your faith pure in the strange land and keep you safe in body and spirit."

Anne laughed affectedly and gazed critically at the jewel in her palm.

"It is not very beautiful," she remarked.

"It is very potent, and I hope you will always wear it," replied her uncle anxiously. "And every time you look at it, remember you were born and bred in the Reformed Faith."

"As to that," said Anne, "His Highness himself said I was to read Amadis de Gaul and play the lute and enjoy such diversions as were fitted to one of my station, and not trouble my head about matters of religion."

Anne had often quoted this remark of her future husband, and the Elector frowned to hear it again on her lips.

"The Prince spoke as a man to a child," he returned, "but you are no longer a child and cannot reason as one. His Highness has promised to respect your faith, and you must respect it also in heart and in spirit, Anne."

The girl carelessly placed the amulet round her neck.

"Oh, I shall do very well, dear uncle," she replied. "I am quite content to trust to His Highness."

"But it is you yourself who must keep the faith alive within you when in the midst of idolaters," said the Lutheran Prince sternly.

"You speak like Grandfather Hesse!" cried the girl peevishly. "I believe you regret my marriage already, but, as I wrote His Highness, God wills it, and the Devil shall not hinder it!"

His frown deepened and a flush of anger mounted to his cheek.

"I shall regret it if you behave like a wilful child, dear niece."

"I have put on your amulet," returned Anne ungraciously. "What else would you? And my serving-women wait——"

"I shall not keep you from them," interrupted the Elector, "but remember that there are more serious matters than gowns and chains appertaining to this marriage."

With that he turned away, for he saw that to argue further with the bride was useless, since her natural pride and vanity had been augmented past reason by the excitement and importance of her present position.

Anne was, indeed, almost beside herself. For three years she had been bent on this marriage with all the passion of which she was capable. She wanted her freedom, she wanted increased grandeur, she wanted the enjoyments of the gay court of Brussels—of which she had heard so much—and she believed herself violently enamoured of the gorgeous cavalier whom she had seen once on the occasion of his visit to Dresden and who was to be her husband.

She watched with pleasure the departure of her uncle, and impatiently called the tailor who was responsible for the dolls. She had some fault to find with each of them: one model had the skirt too long, in another the colour was hideous, the gold lacing of a third did not please her. These objections were taken at random, for she was far too overwrought to consider or even notice the details of the beautiful little dresses.

When the man had bowed himself out with his small gallows full of puppets, Anne sank into one of the deep chairs of blue-and-yellow velvet; her back ached from standing, her head throbbed, her heavy gown dragged at her shoulders, she had not slept for several nights and her whole feeble body was fatigued, but she would spare neither herself nor those who had to please her humour.

Gowns, petticoats, mantles, caps, hoods, gloves, shoes, jewels, every ornament or trinket luxury could devise was brought before her for her inspection. She had been most extravagant in her purchases, and it was already said that when her debts and the feasts had been paid, there would not be anything left of the hundred thousand thalers that formed her dowry. Her thin, feverish fingers handled the brocades and velvets, the silks and lawns, the girdles and chains with a kind of eager energy, as if these things were so many weapons she was piling up against fate.

And so unconsciously she regarded them, she meant to be the grandest lady at the Court of the Regent; her whole small soul was centred on this childish ambition and had no room for any other emotion save a fierce, jealous, but inchoate desire that her brilliant husband should love her. She thought all this bravery would help her accomplish both ends, and therefore devoted all her passionate interest to these splendours of silvered silk, Venetian velvet, cloaks of miniver and red fox, skirts of many coloured brocade, doeskin fringed gloves and shoes sewn with gold thread.

At last her weakness could endure no more; with an hysteric petulance that bordered on tears she dismissed every one, and, taking the arm of her favourite waiting-woman, she limped through the bowing ranks of tailors, jewellers, and sewing-maids into her inner and private chamber.

There she dropped into the cushion-piled chair near the window that stood open on the sunshine, and so sat, looking huddled and dwarfish, her right hand, sparkling with the hard brilliance of an emerald ring, supporting her aching head, her feet resting on a great footstool, her knees drawn up.

The waiting-woman stood at the end of the huge crimson-curtained bed, waiting the pleasure of her mistress.

She was a tall girl, subdued, quiet, patient—qualities to which she owned the dangerous favour of capricious Anne's preference. Her father had served under the Elector Maurice, but returning to his native city, Ghent in the Netherlands, he had been executed as a heretic under the rule of the late Regent, and his entire property confiscated. His wife had fled with her child to the Saxon Court, where she had soon after died of her miseries, leaving her daughter under the protection of the Electress.

Such was the short, sad experience of RÉnÈe le Meung, which had left her reliant, reserved, self-effacing, humble, but passionately attached to the faith for which her parents and her happiness had been sacrificed, and of an earnest gravity beyond her years.

She endured the whims and caprices, the tempers and tyrannies of Anne with more than the usual submission of the dependant, and her lack of vanity and her indifference made her a foil that was precious to the arrogance of her mistress.

RÉnÈe was beautiful with the opulent beauty of her country, but she ignored it, and she had no lover, so Anne was content to ignore it too. Besides, her own vanity was too great for her to be aware how her own unattractiveness was heightened by the loveliness of the graceful Fleming, with her crimson-brown hair and eyes, her rose complexion, her white skin, and exact features, though she was so plain in her dress, so grave in her manner, so always and completely in the background that many besides her mistress might have discounted this beauty that lacked all flash and allure.

As she stood now, outwardly patiently at attention, her thoughts were far away, returning, as always, to the dear past when she had had a home and those who loved her, the times when she had heard her father laugh, her mother sing, when she had herself been full of life and hope and all pleasantness; her present situation, that of an exile employed by charity, she forgot—she seemed for a moment free, as she had once been behind the loved walls of Ghent——

"RÉnÈe," said Anne, opening her eyes, "the Prince wrote to know what my colours were. When he enters Leipsic he will have a thousand knights and gentlemen with him—is it not magnificent?"

The waiting-woman closed her thoughts.

"Indeed, Your Grace is very fortunate," she answered quietly, taking up her wearisome part of confidante. She endured Anne's futile vanities not so much from good humour as from sheer indifference; her disinterest in her present life was her surest buckler against what she had to endure.

"He is indeed a very splendid cavalier," said Anne, with vast satisfaction, "and he made me such fine speeches and compliments. I wish you had seen him when he came to Dresden, but you will soon see him now. And I am higher born than he, for he is only a Count in Germany. Yet he is a sovereign Prince too, and I shall give way to no one at the Court of Brussels. Is it not all very pleasant?"

So the girl chattered on in her shrill, high voice, and the waiting-woman dutifully assented to all she said; but RÉnÈe's calm, RÉnÈe's self-effacement, usually so grateful to Anne, to-day offended her. She wanted a more human interest shown in her affairs, some excitement, some envy, some jealousy.

"You talk as if you were sick!" she cried fretfully. "Do you not care at all about my wedding?"

RÉnÈe flushed at the rare personal address; it was seldom Anne spoke to her as to another human being.

"Of course I care," she answered gravely, "but how can I comment on matters so much above me?"

Anne was mollified.

"Would you not like a husband, rich and handsome?" she asked, trying to provoke the flattery of the other's envy.

"I?" asked RÉnÈe, in genuine surprise. "Who will ever marry me?"

Anne smiled.

"Perhaps some day I shall find some one for you. How old are you?"

"Twenty-five, Your Grace."

"That is not very young! Nearly ten years older than I am! Is it not very fine to be married at sixteen? Would you not like to be married soon?"

"I would never marry any but a Lutheran," replied RÉnÈe calmly.

Anne flushed, and her bright eyes flashed with amazing fury.

"Ah! You, too, dare to blame me because the Prince is a Papist!" she exclaimed.

"Nay," said RÉnÈe gently. "I know there are reasons of State."

"Reasons of State?" shrieked Anne. "I love him and he loves me! You are jealous because you will never have such a knight!"

"Never, truly," replied the waiting-woman with undiminished sweetness. "It is only great ladies like Your Grace who can wed with such as the Prince of Orange."

"You would not marry save with a Lutheran," said Anne. "Then you would not marry the Prince?"

"That is a jest—to suppose such a thing."

"Ay, but would you?" insisted Anne.

RÉnÈe's native courage and honesty flashed through her long reserve, her self-effacement.

"I would not wed with a Papist were he the Emperor himself," she replied firmly.

"You proud hard creature!" cried Anne, vexed to tears. "But it is all a lie—a jealous lie, you would wed the first Papist who asked you."

RÉnÈe was silent.

"Wait until you see the Prince," insisted Anne childishly. "There is no one like him—no one."

"So I have always heard," said RÉnÈe sincerely.

"Did you ever see his first wife?" asked Anne abruptly. "Was she pretty? Did he care for her?"

"I never saw the first Princess, Your Grace. They were very young when they married, and she died very soon."

"Well, I am sure he has forgotten her. If you are so afraid of the Papists and hate them so, why do you come with me to Brussels?" she added maliciously.

The bitter truth, "I must go where I can earn my bread," rose to RÉnÈe's lips, but she suppressed it and merely replied, "I am not afraid of any one corrupting my faith, Your Grace, and I shall be with a Protestant mistress."

"I suppose you would rather stay here," said Anne, "if you could find some Lutheran to marry, but you are not very young and you have red hair, therefore you must make the best of it and come to Brussels."

RÉnÈe was absolutely unmoved by her mistress's rudeness; she hardly heard the words.

"Have you any relations in Brussels?" asked Anne.

"No," replied the waiting-woman, "nor any in the Netherlands. I think—we are all scattered—wandering, or still for ever in the grave;" then quickly changing a subject on which she had been betrayed into speaking with feeling, she asked, "Has His Grace's alchemist's experiment succeeded? It was to be known whether or no this week."

"The Elector said nothing to me of it," replied Anne fretfully. "He gave me a silly little jewel Vanderlinden made. Of course the experiment has failed."

"Poor alchemist!" said RÉnÈe. A vast pity for all endeavour, all disappointment, was now her strongest feeling; the grief of others had more power to move her than her own distress.

Anne began to moan that her head was aching beyond bearing; she indeed looked ill. There was something tragic in her frailty and her excitement, her deformity and her vanity.

RÉnÈe went to fetch the sweet wine and comfits for which she called and which were her usual medicine; as always, she drank greedily and soon fell heavily asleep.

The waiting-woman put back the engraved silver plate and tankard on the black sideboard, and crept softly to the window where the August sun might fall on her face.

She turned her full gentle eyes with a great pity on the wretched little figure of her mistress, whose thin hands were nervously twitching, even in her sleep.

What could this marriage promise?—the groom one of King Philip's courtiers, worldly, handsome, able; the bride this miserable, fretful, ignorant child, mad with vanity, sick with excitement, diseased in body, unbalanced in mind. RÉnÈe, who knew Anne as few did, was almost sorry for the Papist Prince who could not know her at all.

"And for such a union they rejoice and dance and hold their jousts!" thought the waiting-woman wearily.

She gazed out into the sunny air, it was near late afternoon and very peaceful.

RÉnÈe did not see the towers of Leipsic; her mind spread the world before her like a great map painted with bright pictures—great tyrants slaughtering, burning, oppressing; poor people flying homeless, dying unnoticed—everywhere wrong, violence, cruelty—and no one to rise against it, no one to defy such a man as King Philip.

Every one was for himself, his private gain; even the Protestant Princes of Germany who had stood for the faith of Martin Luther, they put their own convenience first, as in this marriage which the Elector had urged forward for his personal interest. There was a Protestant monarch on the throne of England, but she remained friendly with Catholic potentates and raised no finger to help those of her faith so horribly persecuted.

"Always policy, ambition, self-seeking," thought RÉnÈe wearily. "Is there not one in all the world would stand for his God, his country only? Not one to be the champion of liberty of faith?"

Not one, she believed; they kept the gaudy show of chivalry in the tourneys and jousts, but the spirit of it was long since lost. There were no more knights, there was no one to stand forward for the weak and the miserable, the humble and the helpless; the Reformed Faith had produced saints and martyrs but not yet a champion or a protector.

"They all bow to circumstance, these great princes and nobles," thought RÉnÈe; "there is not one of them who would endanger the tenth part of his possessions for the cause of the poor Protestants, for liberty, for country—not one."

She leant her sick head against the mullions and closed her eyes; life seemed so long, so futile, the world so wrong, so ugly.

"There have been heroes," the eternal romance of youth whispered in her heart. "Why should not one come now when he is so needed, ah, so sorely needed?"

She opened her eyes on the sun, on the hot, silent city with the languorous air of festival and holiday.

"If I ever met such an one, or knew of him, how I would worship him!"

Love she never thought of; she did not believe that it was possible for her to ever love, but she knew that she would gladly die for one who would champion her persecuted faith, her oppressed country—very gladly die, or live, in happy abnegation in his service.

The clock struck six; the tire-women entered to rouse Anne and dress her for supper; it was RenÉ's one time of freedom. She hastened away before her mistress's peevish caprice should have decided to detain her, and went forth into the clean, bright streets.

Leipsic was unfamiliar to RÉnÈe le Meung, she did not know where the sunny streets she chose would lead her, but as she knew no one and had no object in her walk, this did not trouble her. She walked slowly, enjoying the sun, which was the only thing left her to enjoy.

She did not seem a lady of the court, so simple and even poor was her dark green kirtle and mantle, so unpretentious her whole appearance; even if she had wished to follow some degree of fashion she was unable to, for her sole resource was what was given her as waiting-woman to the Elector's niece, and that was little enough.

But she was utterly unconscious of her plainness of attire as she walked unnoticed by the hurrying crowd that now and then pushed her against the wall or the street posts in their haste.

Every one was full of the wedding and the subsequent festivities; the name of Anne and of her groom was on every lip; there seemed no room in Leipsic for anything but rejoicing. The air of gaiety, of idleness, and holiday was accentuated by the great glory of the late afternoon sun which filled the air with golden motes, blazed in golden flame in the casement windows, gleamed on the weathercocks, and filled the upper boughs of the elms and chestnuts in the squares and gardens.

As RÉnÈe was turning into one of these squares she met the Elector's alchemist walking thoughtfully under the shade of the trees with a small brass-covered book in his hand.

She would have passed and left him to his meditations, but he chanced to see her and instantly paused and saluted her. He had a kindness for her; she had always been gentle and interested in his work when they had chanced to meet.

"This may remind you," he said, holding out the little volume, "of that wonderful Book given by a Jew to the great Nicolas Flamel by which he finally discovered the secret of secrets. Does he not describe it as with brass covers, leaves of bark engraved with an iron pencil, and symbolic pictures finely coloured?"

"And he discovered the stone?" asked RÉnÈe.

"Ay," answered Vanderlinden wistfully, "and in evidence of it may be seen his statue to this day in Paris, together with fourteen churches and seven hospitals that he founded with the gold he manufactured."

"And the secret died with him?"

"He disclosed it to no one," admitted the alchemist. "I bought this book in memory of his—it cost but two florins and I doubt it is worth more."

He put the book under his arm and asked RÉnÈe if she would see his house, which was but a few yards away; he had taken, he said, for his stay in Leipsic, the dwelling of another alchemistral philosopher who had lately gone travelling; this man had had a shop for perfumery, soaps, and engraved gems which he—Vanderlinden—was continuing to hold open, and where he did some little trade among those gathered in Leipsic for the wedding.

"I would rather have stayed in Dresden," he added, "and concluded my experiment there, but His Princely Grace insisting on my coming hither, though not paying my expenses of the road, so I am obliged to make what I can with these washes and unguents."

"I am sorry the experiment failed," said RÉnÈe gently. The occupation of the alchemist seemed to her more worthy than that of most other men; at least he had set his aim high, and was searching for what would benefit mankind as much as it would himself.

"Perhaps the next may succeed," answered the alchemist diffidently, "but I doubt if God hath reserved this great honour for me—this high favour."

They turned towards the house, which was situated at the corner of the square, and entered the shop—a room which was opposite the parlour where Vanderlinden had received the Elector.

This room faced west, and the full light of the setting sun poured through the broad low window on to the shelves where stood the pots, bottles, cases, boxes, vases containing the alchemist's wares, and on to the long smooth counter where the glittering scales gleamed, and where two men were leaning over a tray of engraved gems such as are used for signet rings.

He behind the counter was the alchemist's foremost assistant, the companion of all his wanderings, and the sharer of his fortunes—a lean, silent Frenchman, named DuprÈs, who was a noted spirit raiser, and possessed a mother-of-pearl table on which he could bring the angels to discourse with him, and a tablet of polished jet in which he could foresee future events.

He was now engaged in holding a violet stone, clear and pure as crystal and engraved with the first labour of Hercules, against the strong sunlight, which flashed through it, giving a glorious strength of colour to the little square gem.

The customer was a young cavalier, not much over twenty, splendidly vested in black velvet cross cut over stiff white satin; a cloak of orange cloth hung from one shoulder, fastened across the breast with cords of gold, three ruffs encircled his throat, the topmost or master ruff being edged with silver lace and touching his ears.

His appearance was singularly charming; though rather below the average height, he was extremely graceful, and he carried his small, well-shaped head with the noble carriage of a fine stag; his features were aristocratic and aquiline, and expressed gaiety, frankness, and good humour; his thick, dark-brown hair fell in waves on to his ruff, and was curled low on to the brow.

His well-formed right hand lay open on the counter, palm upwards, and was filled with the sparkle and light of yellow and red stones.

RÉnÈe knew this young seigneur well; he was Louis of Nassau, the brother and envoy of Anne's bridegroom, whose mouthpiece and proxy he had been during the three years of the negotiations.

The waiting-woman, with her instinct and training of self-effacement, was drawing back at sight of the young Count, but with his usual gay friendliness he rose and addressed her, asking her opinion of the jewels before him.

"I am a poor judge of such things," smiled RÉnÈe. "I do not know why I am here at all, save that I was asked very courteously."

She came and stood by the counter, looking, with her habitual utter indifference, at Louis of Nassau; she did not know much of him nor had they ever spoken together further than a few words, but she did not like him despite his courtesy, his charm, his undeniable attraction.

And this dislike was because he, a Protestant himself, had been eagerly forwarding the marriage of his Papist brother with Protestant Anne, because he was known to be looking for a wealthy bride himself, and because she judged him frivolous, extravagant, and thoughtless.

"Will you be glad, seigneur," she asked with a flicker of curiosity, "when His Highness, your brother's wedding is really accomplished?"

He raised his fresh young face quickly.

"If I shall be glad?" he said, and for the first time RÉnÈe noticed the lines of fatigue and anxiety beneath the brilliant eyes and on the fair brow.

"We shall all be glad," said DuprÈs, with the freedom he always assumed, "when the little lady is safely in the Netherlands."

"Not I," said RÉnÈe. "I would rather live in Saxony than Brussels."

"Does the Lady Anne hold that opinion?" asked the Count.

The question at first amazed RÉnÈe, then she swiftly recalled how Anne had been shut away and guarded by the Elector (her sickly unattractiveness being more hedged about than beauty, for fear reports of her should reach and disgust her prospective husband), and that Louis could only have obtained rare glimpses of her, and never have had an opportunity to know her temper nor her mind as the waiting-woman knew both.

"My mistress is very glad to go to Brussels, and very devoted to His Highness," she answered conventionally, adding, with more feeling, "She is very young, princely Count, and frail, and the excitement of these days exalts her spirit."

"She does not regret Saxony, I think," remarked the alchemist, "which is well for the future tranquillity of His Highness."

"Nor is she afraid of a Papist Court, eh?" asked the young Count with a frank laugh. "I believe the maiden thinks more of her gowns and her new titles than of the sermons and prayer books she leaves behind."

He spoke carelessly, slipping a ring with a dark honey coloured stone on his finger the while. RÉnÈe wondered at him.

"Her Grace will remain of the Reformed Faith," she said.

"'But she will live Catholicly,'" quoted the Count with a smile. He spoke as if he was pleased (as indeed he was) that the laborious negotiations had ended in the Prince getting what he had been striving for from the first, namely, the lady without any conditions as to her faith, for a Protestant wife was obviously impossible for a noble of King Philip. RÉnÈe had watched the troubled course of the tangled diplomacies of guardian and suitor with equal disdain for the Elector who gave his niece to a Papist for his own convenience and the Prince who took a bride, who was to him a heretic, merely because it suited his ambitions.

Louis of Nassau noticed her silence; he had remarked before that she was strangely quiet and also that she was exceedingly comely. His glance, quick to appreciate and admire fair women, now fell kindly over her graceful figure, her face so finely coloured and so delicate in line, the rose carnation of lip and cheek, the glow of the heavy, carelessly dressed hair.

"I wonder what you think of?" he said.

RÉnÈe started at the personal address, she had been so long a mere part of the background that when one treated her as an individual it always confused her.

"What should I think of, princely Count?" she answered. "Foolish things, of course."

Louis handed the ring and the violet gem to DuprÈs, who packed them into little cases of cedar wood.

"You do not look as if your thoughts were foolish," he replied, with more gravity than she had ever associated with him.

"Nay, I think she is a very wise lady, noble seigneur," said the alchemist.

"Your thoughts, then?" smiled Louis of Nassau.

RÉnÈe's deep-set indifference to all things overcame her momentary confusion.

"I am too good a Protestant to rejoice at this marriage," she replied quietly, "and my thoughts were all sad ones, noble Count, and did not in any way touch your high policies."

Louis of Nassau answered gently; he knew something of her history.

"It is all a question of policy certainly," he paid her the compliment of sincere speaking. "The marriage suits the Elector and my brother—the lady too, I think—and religious differences are easily accommodated among people of sense. The Prince is no fanatic—your faith will be protected as long as you are in his household. He, too, was bred a Protestant."

RÉnÈe could make no answer; she knew the Prince had left his faith when the splendid heritages, rank, and honours of his cousin RenÉ of Orange had fallen to him—his father had sent the German Protestant to the Emperor's Court to become a Papist, and almost a Spaniard. RÉnÈe saw nothing splendid in any of this—it was a piece with the rest of the world.

"You dislike my brother?" asked Louis shrewdly.

"I like no one," said the waiting-woman calmly.

"Have you seen the Prince?"

"Nay; when His Highness came to Dresden I was very ill."

"I thought that you had not seen him," remarked Louis. "No one who has seen him dislikes him."

"You put me in the wrong," protested RÉnÈe. "Who am I to judge great ones? Take no heed of me, gracious Count. I am looking for a hero, and that is as hard to find as the holy stone," she added, with a smile at the alchemist.

"You have been reading Amadis de Gaul, or Charlemagne and his paladins—fie, I did not think it of your gravity," jested Louis of Nassau.

RÉnÈe flushed into animation, and it was like the sudden blooming of a tightly closed flower, so did the quick flash of her feeling light her features into beauty.

"There were such men," she said, "and might be again, surely—do you not believe so, Magister? And never were they more needed than now——"

She checked herself sharply and the lovely flush faded. She turned away and picked up one of the slender glass bottles of essences Vanderlinden had placed before her.

Louis of Nassau looked at her curiously. "She is beautiful," he thought.

"Perhaps one day you will find your hero and Vanderlinden his stone," he said, and the sun flickered like a caress over his brilliant person and his pleasant young face.

"Perhaps? Nay, surely," replied the alchemist. "Or if we do not, another will. For both are there as surely as God is in heaven."

"You, too, think the world needs some knight, some paladin?" asked the Count, drawing on his white gloves stitched with gold.

"I have travelled much," replied the alchemist, "and could not avoid seeing, albeit that I was ever engaged in abstruse studies, the great horrid cruelties and wrongs abroad, especially under the reign of His Majesty King Philip, in whose dominions God grant me never to set foot again. I was in England, princely seigneur, while he was King of that country, and I did see things that made me weary of life. So, too, in Spain from whence I fled hastily. And, lately, it is no better in the Netherlands; indeed there are few places where a man can think as he please and speak freely, save only in these states of Germany."

Louis of Nassau looked thoughtfully at the speaker, and then at RÉnÈe whose fair head was bent over the rows of alabaster pots and bottles of twisted glass and crystal. He had never lived under a tyrant, his brief joyous life had passed in absolute freedom, and with him his faith was not the result of conviction but of heritage. Still the old man's words and the girl's eloquent face were not without effect on him; some emotion strange and vague echoed in his heart, and he sighed as he took the two little boxes from DuprÈs.

"There are many changes abroad," he said. "Who knows but that this hero may appear to put straight all these tangled wrongs."

He took up his high-crowned white hat with the cluster of black plumes, and, saluting all very pleasantly, left the shop.

"There goes no hero there at least," said DuprÈs softly, glancing through the window at the Count, who glittered in the sun without. "He spent fifty thalers to-day in unguents—conserve of violets, lotion of citrons, sweetmeats of pistachio nut, rose and orange water!"

"Is his brother like him?" asked RÉnÈe.

"I have never seen the Prince of Orange," answered the alchemist, but DuprÈs, who appeared to have been everywhere and seen every one, declared he knew the Prince well by sight.

"He is more magnificent than Count Louis, and more to be feared though so few years older—for he is certainly a great Prince. But prodigal and greatly in debt, they say—and not very pious, nor straight-living—at least, no more so than any man of his blood and youth."

"Ah, Dominus," said RÉnÈe, "cannot you look in your jet tablets and see what the future of this marriage will be?"

"I have looked for the Elector time enough," replied DuprÈs with a little smile, "and saw nothing but confusion."

"Have you tried to see the future of the poor Protestant peoples?" asked RÉnÈe earnestly.

The Frenchman carefully put away the tray of gems.

"That is too large a thing to be looked for in a square of jet or any magic mirror whatever," he replied.

"We must look for it in our own hearts," said RÉnÈe sadly. "Well, I have out-stayed my leisure; give me leave to come another time and see your treasures."

Vanderlinden took up a tall bottle of milk-white glass with a stopper of scarlet porcelain and filled with jasmine essence; he offered it to RÉnÈe with a half-awkward kindness.

The waiting-woman, who never received any kind of gift, felt the tears swiftly sting her lids.

"I shall not come to see you since you treat me so well," she said, with an eager little smile; she did not realize that she was the only lady who had ever come to the shop without a cavalier to buy gifts for her, nor that if she had been as other women Count Louis would have offered her as much perfumery as she could need; she was unaware how her reserve and her indifference hedged her from common courtesies. She did not miss gallantry and compliments, but she often missed kindness, and therefore the alchemist's action stirred her heart, while Count Louis' flattery would have left her cold.

She passed out into the street, the aromatic odours of the shop still about her. She saw Vanderlinden's two apprentices hurrying along with rosettes of Anne's colours threaded with orange ribbons. The streets were now in shadow, for the sun had set behind the houses, but over all was that sense of festival, of excitement, and in the air were the names of Anne and William of Orange.

Anne of Saxony stood at the top of the wide stairs of Leipsic town hall waiting to welcome her bridegroom; about her spread the motionless pageantry of harquebusiers, burgher guard, nobles, gentlemen, and pages—all ranged up the stairs and on the landings in groups of brilliant colours and shining weapons.

It was St. Bartholomew's Day, the 24th of August, and intensely hot; the air of the town hall, though constantly refreshed with perfume sprays, was close and dry; through the windows, carefully shuttered against the heat, the sun crept in through odd chinks and made spots of dazzling gold. The pages sighed under their breath, the gentlemen heaved their shoulders under the heavy weight of velvet, brocade, and jewelled chains; the ladies behind the bride swayed to and fro with little whispers and glances among themselves; the Electress stood slightly apart, covertly fanning herself, and lamenting to the bride's uncle, the Landgrave William, son of the old Landgrave of Hesse, that the electoral palace which was so much more commodious than the town hall, should be under repair.

The bride herself stood in advance of all, on the very edge of the top stair; her eyes were directed fiercely down between the two rows of soldiers that glittered against the dark wood balustrades.

The long weeks of tumultuous days and sleepless nights had reduced her feebleness to utter exhaustion, but passionate excitement supported her, and gave her the strength to stand there bearing the weight of her heavy robes, the heated air, the fatigue of standing.

The Elector, with four thousand nobles, gentlemen, and soldiers, had ridden to meet the bridegroom and his escort outside the city; to those waiting here the return of Augustus and his guest seemed wearisomely delayed.

"Why do they not come—why do they not come?" muttered Anne again and again.

RÉnÈe le Meung, who stood close behind, remarked her mistress's gorgeous figure with a tired curiosity.

The waiting-woman was herself so remote in heart from all this festivity which she stood in the centre of, so far in spirit from all the excitement by which she was surrounded, that these people seemed to her in a strange way lifeless—splendid puppets like those the tailor had brought on the polished wood gallows; and when she looked at the bride she was sorry, in a vague way, that Anne was not more lovely, more gracious, more sweet. The long-stifled romance of her own youth told her the central figure of all this pageantry should be more worthy.

Since seven that morning Anne had stood on her feet being attired, and it was now towards two of the clock—the actual time of the wedding being five.

All those hours of her women's labour and fatigue, her own screaming impatience and trembling nervousness, had resulted in an appearance almost grotesquely brilliant.

She wore a gown of stiff satin, interchangeable wine red and yellow—the colour of old amber; it flowed fold on fold from her tight waist, to fall heavily on the floor, weighted by a hem of ruby and topaz embroidery; in front it was slightly caught up by a gold cord, to display a petticoat of black and crimson brocade in a design of flowers, and the pointed shoes cloth of gold with red silk tissue roses.

The bodice was crimson cloth of gold, cut low in the front, and rising behind to a high upstanding collar of finest gold lace, the full sleeves were of pale yellow satin, laced across and across with gold and crimson cords; round the throat and over the bosom hung strings of pearls and rubies and long chains of curious enamel; the dull-coloured hair was crowned by a gold cap sewn with pearls, and long emeralds swung in the ears.

From Anne's stooping shoulders there hung, despite the heat, an orange mantle lined and bordered with ermine, which lay a full yard on the polished boards behind her. But none of this costly and princely magnificence could disguise the thin malformed figure, and the fierce fire of the gems only served to make the pale weary face look like a colourless mask—and colourless she was, from her pallid lips to her light brows—only in her pale eyes burned the flame of her passionate, jealous, eager soul.

So she stood, waiting for her lover, as she was pleased to consider him; and RÉnÈe was sorry for her mistress from her heart.

And now the doors at the foot of the stairs were opened, and the full August sun fell on the black and orange of the halberdiers, the spearmen, and harquebusiers, the gleaming weapons and fluttering banners that rose above the heads of the crowd that filled the market square.

Outside the town hall the whole splendid cavalcade had halted, and presently, through the broad shaft of sunshine and in at the doors came the Elector, accompanied by several other German princes and the bridegroom, escorted by his three brothers—the Counts John, Adolphus, and Louis.

At the foot of the stairs these gentlemen paused for a second, and among those waiting at the top there was the slightest movement and murmur—a bending forward of expectant faces, the rustle of stiff satins.

There was indeed great curiosity to behold the bridegroom, many of those present having never seen him before; RÉnÈe, more curious because more thoughtful than the others, stepped lightly from behind her mistress and gazed down the stairs.

She saw one cavalier come forward from the others and ascend the stairs a little in advance of them; this was he whose fame had travelled so far, who had been so criticized, so discussed in Saxony, whose marriage project had been the subject of so many intrigues and broils in Madrid, Brussels, and Dresden.

Slowly he came up the stairs, his eyes fixed on Anne, and himself the subject of all regards.

RÉnÈe watched him long, intently.

This was her first sight of him, and she was long to remember this brilliant scene, long to recall in other scenes of terror, misery, and exaltation that figure coming up the stairs with the blaze of sunshine and the little group of princes behind him.

This, her first impression of William of Orange, was of a gentleman of extreme good looks with the carriage of a soldier and the grace of a courtier. He was slender, twenty-eight years of age, and of a Southern type—dark, warmly coloured, with a small head and regular features, the nose straight, the lips full, the eyes chestnut brown, large, and well-opened; his red-brown hair was short, thick, and curling, his beard close shaven, his complexion dark. He wore still a simple dress of tawny velvet buttoned high under the chin and, turning over with a little collar of embroidered lawn, it was slashed over an under-vest of scarlet, and the sleeves and breeches were of black silk fretted with silver work; his one adornment was a long gold chain of massive links, passed six times round his neck; he carried his gloves and a black cap with a heron's plume in his left hand.

Straight up the stairs he came with an ease that seemed unconscious. Anne swayed towards him; he kissed her cold hand, smiled at her, and stood so a moment beside her, looking down into her pale, almost frightened, face.

In that moment RÉnÈe saw, as by a sudden light, the bride as she was in contrast with him. By the standard of his complete manhood, his finished accomplishment, his undeniable charm, gaiety, and power, she beheld Anne a peevish, sickly, malicious, ignorant child, and she turned her eyes away. This contrast of bride and groom seemed to her to touch this mating with horror.

The Prince now turned to the Electress, and Anne, with a deep reverence to her future husband, withdrew with her women to the apartments prepared for her use.

No sooner was she there than her strained control gave way; she scolded, she stamped, and finally broke into hysterical tears.

The frightened agitated women ran hither and thither with cordials and essences and all the details of the resplendent wedding-gown with which their mistress had to be vested.

RÉnÈe, a little bewildered by that sight of the Prince of Orange, went about her duties quietly; she believed she knew the cause of Anne's untimely tears. Deep beneath the Princess's vanities, ignorances, and arrogances lay a woman's intuitions; these warned her, sometimes in a manner not to be ignored, that she was crooked, undesirable, and now they told her that the Prince's kind glance had not been that of a lover. Anne, too, RÉnÈe thought, had felt the bitter difference between herself and her betrothed.

At last the bride, alternately shaken by nervous temper and stormy sobbing, was arrayed in the wedding-gown of milk-white velvet, over-veiled with a skirt of braided pearls, transparent silver wings rising at the back in lieu of a ruff, and over all a train of pale purple embroidered with crystal flowers; a wreath of myrtle twisted with an orange ribbon was placed on the stiff waves of her crimped hair, the traces of tears were powdered away as well as might be, the rings, necklets, bracelets, chains were replaced. She was perfumed with costly essence extracted from Eastern lilies, then escorted to an upper chamber where waited the Elector, the Electress, two town councillors, the Prince of Orange, and his brother Counts.

All the women now withdrew save the Electress's lady, Sophia von Miltitz, and RÉnÈe.

In a corner, before a table, stood one Wolf Sesdel, a notary.

The Prince of Orange had changed his attire; he was in rose cloth of gold from head to foot, with a short cloak of dark violet velvet lined with blue, and a triple ruff of gold tissue.

RÉnÈe glanced at him again. "A mere courtier, like his brother," she thought. Her eyes turned to Count John; he, too, was a princely young man, though without the great charm of William or the infinite grace of Louis.

Bride and groom were now placed opposite each other before the notary, his brother and one of his gentlemen behind the Prince; Dame Sophia, one of the councillors, and RÉnÈe, behind Anne; in front Elector and Electress with Hans von Ponika, the second councillor, who addressed the Prince, reminding him that the Elector had sent him a memorandum requiring him to preserve Anne in her present faith, to allow her to receive the Augsburg sacraments, even, at extreme need, in her chamber, and to instruct her children in the doctrines of the Reformed Church.

This memorandum William had always refused to sign. He listened to the councillor's long speech courteously, but with a look of amusement, RÉnÈe thought, as if he appreciated at its true value this last attempt on the part of Augustus to salve his conscience on the question of the bridegroom's Papistry.

"As your princely Highness," continued Von Ponika, "has been pleased to so far give no agreement in writing on these points, it has been arranged that you should now give your consent verbally, before these princely witnesses."

William, with laughing eyes in a grave face, looked at the Elector, whose stern features were impassive. Anne was trembling like one in a fever, and continually pressing her handkerchief to her dry lips and burning cheeks.

Von Ponika proceeded to read the memorandum which William had rejected since April last, and asked if His Highness was prepared to keep the articles contained therein?

The Prince advanced a step towards the Elector and answered—RÉnÈe noted his voice, low, deep, and soft, a very masculine voice—

"Gracious Elector, I remember the writing that you sent me in April, and which this learned doctor has just read. I now declare to Your Highness that I will act in all as becomes a Prince, and conform to this note as I ever said I would conform."

This evasion was all the Elector had hoped for. He knew as well as William did that no subject of King Philip could live according to the Augsburg Confession nor practise the rites of the Reformed Church, but he had finally satisfied his conscience, and when William offered his hand the Elector took it heartily.

The notary then put the Prince's reply on record, and all left the room.

The bridal procession was now formed. In front the Court musicians playing bravely, after them the marshals, the nobles, the guests, the envoys, the Elector and his wife, and the bride and groom, followed by the councillors and such of the Netherland grandees who had dared King Philip sufficiently to attend a wedding His Majesty secretly frowned on.

So to the sound of drums and trumpet they entered the great hall, which was hung from ceiling to floor with fine silk tapestries of Arras and carpeted with Eastern rugs, and furnished with five round tables and chairs, each chair like a throne.

There the marriage ceremony took place. If the Elector had tacitly accepted William's evasions on religious questions, William as tacitly accepted the Lutheran marriage rites, which would have been little to the taste of King Philip.

After Doctor Pfeffinger had united the two, Anne was conducted to a gold couch with gold curtains set on a dais at the upper end of the hall; the Prince seated himself beside her, and kneeling pages of noble blood handed them goblets of rock crystal filled with sweet wine, and comfits on plates of engraved silver.

The rest of the company were also served, and all drank standing and looking towards the bride. Anne's spirits had now risen; she was flushed with pride and happiness, her eyes sparkled, and she drank her wine with a relish.

The Prince had rather an absent look, though completely at his ease; his mind did not appear to be wholly in the ceremonies in which he was taking part so gracefully.

He now rose, and the Margrave of Brandenburg raised Anne and presented her to her husband.

"Gracious Highness," he said, "I give you this maiden on behalf of the Elector, and I recommend Your Grace to cherish her with all care and affection, and to leave her undisturbed in the right use of the Holy Gospel and Sacraments."

The bridal couple parted, to a second time change their garments.

Anne was in a rapture.

"Is he not noble and fine?" she asked her weary women as they again disrobed her. "I think there is no knight like him in Europe. And how foolish my uncle is with his notes and promises! As if I could not trust my princely husband!"

She used the new title with an affected laugh.

"I am now the Princess of Orange," she added.

"Yes, Highness," said RÉnÈe. She was weary from the long hours of standing; her head ached from the noise of the drums and trumpets, the glare of all the mingled gems and flashing gold and the bright colours of the dresses, the intensity of the heat, and lack of food. None of the overworked women had eaten since morning; the kitchens were wholly absorbed in preparations for the wedding feast.

Anne's shrill, excited chatter fell distastefully on the ears of RÉnÈe. 'What will they think of her in Brussels?' she wondered; it seemed grotesque to imagine her the head of the Prince of Orange's gorgeous and extravagant household, the greatest lady in the brilliant Court of the Regent.

But Anne, at least, seemed not to doubt at all of coming triumphs; as she was arrayed she talked incessantly of her future glories.

She now wore a gown of blue satin with an overskirt of silver brocade worked with raised yellow roses, her bodice was one stiff piece of silver as if she was encased in the precious metal itself, her long yellow sleeves were caught together and fastened with sapphire studs; her bosom was bare, but round her throat was a fine ruff reaching to her ears and sparkling with little brilliants, her hair was confined under a cap of silver tissue, and from her shoulders hung a mantle of darker yellow satin with a great collar of rose velvet and a lining of blue.

Thus she returned to the great hall where covers for fifty were laid, ten at each table, and the first course of twenty-five dishes being immediately served, she took her place beside her husband, who wore crimson satin cut over violet cloth of gold, and so sewn with gold that no more than a gleam of the stuff was visible. The Elector's choir began to play a gay measure, and twelve young counts with gold wreaths on their heads brought forward the wine, the water, the napkins for the use of the bride and groom.

It was now past six, and the great heat diminishing. RÉnÈe and the other women went slowly about the Princess's apartments, putting straight the disorder, and beginning to lay by the gowns in the long travelling coffers; the sound of the bridal music came faintly to their ears, and faintly they could savour the mingled odours of the extravagant wedding dishes. As they moved about their task they ate cakes and comfits, having little hope of a supper that night, and in a tired, disjointed way they talked together.

"She is quite right, he is very handsome," said one, "and very magnificent too. They say he is greatly in debt."

"Well, there will not be much of her fortune left to repair holes in his," replied another. "Such extravagance! And she looks all the uglier for it all. And I hear he is fond of pretty women." The speaker glanced with some satisfaction at her own pleasing reflection in Anne's mirror.

"Was his first wife well favoured?"

"Well, she was straight and had a quiet tongue."

"Herr Jesus! Why should he wed FrÄulein Anne?" cried another damsel, wearily seating herself. "Not for her beauty, nor her money——"

"For their 'reasons of State,'" quoted RÉnÈe, "and also because he does not know her. This will prove an ugly marriage. He does not look a man to suffer a curst wife."

"Perhaps she will be sweeter now," replied the other.

"There is no sweetness in her," said a third, gathering up the bunches of lavender, allspice leaves, rosemary, and orris-root that were to be laid among the bride's clothes in the long carved caskets.

"How my head aches!" said RÉnÈe.

"It is her voice," replied one of the women, "it rings in the head like the clanging of a brass bell. Come and see the dancing. We can leave this work for a while."

RÉnÈe and three of her companions slipped away and went by the back entrances to the gallery overlooking the Grand Hall; the soldiers allowed them to pass, and the pages brought them sugar sticks, fruit, and comfits left from the feast.

"I am sickened with sweets to-day," said RÉnÈe, with a faint smile. She rested her elbows on the carved balustrade of the gallery and looked down.

The tables had been removed and the hall cleared for dancing; the summer sun still shone without, but had left the high windows, and already lamps, hanging to the ceiling bosses by gold chains, were lit, sending a soft light over the polished floor and silk hangings on the wall; the choir was singing and playing, and the Court and guests were moving through one of the elaborate figures of the prearranged dances. The ladies in their great farthingales, stiff bodices, and long trains, the gentlemen in their huge ruffs, formal cloaks, embroidered doublets, and gleaming chains, moved slowly and precisely through the intricacies of the dance, as if they traced some complicated pattern on the floor with their fine and sparkling shoes.

To RÉnÈe they seemed as if they were being moved by invisible strings from the dark ceiling—so many puppets moving with stiff grace and immobile dignity.

She sought out the rose red and gold figure of the Prince of Orange; he was dancing with the Electress. She noticed that he moved with more spirit and gaiety than any of the others; also that he kept bad time to the music, and more than once was a little out of step in the long galliard he had not previously rehearsed.

The dance at an end the bride and groom returned to their gold couch, and a band of maidens in green and purple entered the hall and presented them with long sheaves of lilies bound with silver cords, round bunches of crimson and white roses, sprays of myrtle blossom, and parcels of sweets in gold tissue.

After this the Chamberlain clapped his hands and a party of masquers ran in, curiously habited as Turks, Russians, fools, bird-snarers, and giants, and began executing a fantastic measure.

"The Prince brought them from the Netherlands," said one of the waiting-women.

"It is a silly show," replied RÉnÈe, "or else I have no heart for these things."

She left the gallery and returned to Anne's temporary apartments, which would no longer be used, as others had been prepared for the Prince and Princess. RÉnÈe mechanically sorted and folded the confusion of garments, locked away the hastily discarded jewels, arranged the brushes, combs, unguents, crimping irons, curling sticks, powders, perfumes, that had been used in the adornment of the bride, then opened the curtains and stepped out of the narrow window on to the little curved balcony that overlooked the market square.

The pale purple sky spread, stainless of cloud, above the roofs, gables, and towers; the bells were ringing gay peals from all the chiming belfries of Leipsic; joy-fires flared up here and there against the crystal light of the stars; the breeze was perfumed with the scent of summer and still sun-warmed. RÉnÈe was not thinking of the gaiety and loveliness of the festival night; through her mind ran a few sentences she had overheard from two Netherlanders of the Prince's suite as she went up the back staircase to see the dancing.

"How long will these feasts last?" one had said. "The Cardinal plays his own game at home—it would be well to return immediately."

"They say he will persuade the King to enforce the Inquisition," the other answered, "so resolute is he to extirpate heresy."

And the two men had looked stern, gloomy, and anxious for guests at a bridal feast, and RÉnÈe recalled their words with a bitter shudder.

It was the Inquisition that had arrested her father and handed him over to his death; it was the Inquisition that had confiscated his entire property and left her mother and herself dependent on charity.

Her face grew hard and almost fierce.

"Extirpate heresy," she said half aloud. "Well, I will die that way too."

The joy-fires sprang up and the bells and the music blended; presently the stars faded in the light of the risen moon.

St. Batholomew's Day was over and the famous marriage accomplished at last.

The morrow of the wedding, in the still early hours before the tourneys, mummings, and festivals had begun, while Anne was in the hands of women again being combed, perfumed, and arrayed for the gaieties of the day, the Prince left the town hall unattended and crossed the market square to the handsome residence where his brothers were lodged. Count Louis and Count Adolphus were still abed, weary with dancing and feasting, but Count John was in the great library of the house writing letters. This Nassau was a fine member of his fine race, well-made, alert, with intelligent noble features, though blunter than those of his brothers and too broad for perfect comeliness; his eyes were dark and unusually brilliant, his close hair and moustaches light brown; he had not the great courtliness and magnificence of William nor the singular charm of his younger brother, but he was a very frank, open, high-minded gentleman of a winning appearance, though somewhat grave for his twenty-five years.

He still wore his morning gown of purple velvet with great sleeves purflewed in gold; like all his house he was eminently a grand seigneur.

When his brother entered he rose and greeted him with real affection.

Although William had so early left his home for a new faith and more splendid fortunes, which had made him an intimate of an Emperor and placed him high above all his family in rank, his relations with his parents and his brothers and sisters had always remained warm and sincere. The recent death of his father had left him Count of Nassau and head of the Dillenburg branch of his house, and his brothers regarded him with augmented devotion and affection both as their hereditary chief and the most famous and brilliant wearer of their name.

"So early?" said Count John.

"I had news from Mechlin last night," said William, who had his agents everywhere. "Did you hear?"

"Nay," replied his brother. "How should I hear anything yesterday save jests and compliments? How is little Anne?"

William raised his brows and smiled; he moved to the sunny window, and seated himself in the red-cushioned embrasure. John, with a quick excuse, returned to finish his letter which was to his mother at Dillenburg, giving her an account of yesterday's ceremony.

The Prince looked out on to the market square; the long tension of his marriage negotiations being now over, he felt a kind of disappointment mingled with his relief, almost as if in his heart he doubted if this much-disputed match had been worth the immense pains he had taken to forward it. Hitherto his relations with women had always been pleasant; he had been first married, when he was seventeen, to Anne of Egmont, the wealthy heiress of the Van Burens. Her hand had not been sought by him, but had been in the nature of a magnificent gift from the favour of the Emperor. Anne, however, had been gentle, prudent, tender, and he had lived with her in contentment and peace; the other women whom he had known or courted since her death had all had some quality to attract or enthral. He was a knight who could choose among the finest by reason of his person as well as of his rank, and his taste had always led him to the gay, the magnificent, the loving. The few hours since he had met his bride yesterday had seemed to show him a specimen of womanhood with which he was unfamiliar; the fretful, deformed, passionate, and ignorant girl who was now his wife a little bewildered, a little troubled him. Already he had been stung by her tactless exhibition of the pride that could rate him her inferior, already he had winced a little at the unattractiveness her hysteric excitement and her over-sumptuous attire had emphasized.

Count John closed up and sealed his letter, then glanced at William, who still sat thoughtfully; the sun was over him from head to foot, and sparkled in the thick waves of his chestnut hair and in the bronze and gold threads of the dark-green damask doublet he wore.

"What news from Mechlin?" asked the younger brother.

"Granvelle made a public entry to celebrate his appointment as archbishop," replied William briefly. "No one of consequence was there, and the people went into their houses and put the shutters up."

"It is believed that he will enforce the Inquisition in the Netherlands," remarked John thoughtfully.

"He most assuredly will," said William. "He seems to have unbounded influence with the King."

John looked at him and hesitated; he saw that his brother was unusually grave, and he had a shrewd guess at the cause, but he did not venture to probe William's unusual reserve.

"What did you come to speak of?" he ventured at last.

"Of Cardinal Granvelle," answered William, looking at him.

Count John cast down his brilliant eyes. He was a keen follower of the political events in the Netherlands, and knew perfectly well how matters stood between Cardinal Granvelle and his brother; it was a difficult position, and one that promised great storms in the future.

Anthony Perrenot, at first Bishop of Arras, recently created Archbishop of Mechlin and Cardinal Granvelle, had at one time been an intimate and supporter of William of Orange, and was still by the world considered his friend; his brother had been William's tutor, and numbers of his relatives held posts and offices in William's lavish and magnificent household. The Prince as Stadtholder of Holland, Utrecht, and Zeeland, and member of the State Council, and the priest as the most powerful member of all the three Boards which advised and controlled Margaret of Parma—Philip's recently-appointed Regent in the Netherlands—had been much brought together, and at first had works as colleagues and friends. But lately Granvelle's violence toward heresy, his smiling insolence, his rapacity, his underhand intrigues with Philip had alienated him from William, who was averse to persecution, and, moreover, since their last stormy parting in the streets of Flushing, no longer in such high favour with his master, Philip. The friendship between Granvelle and William had changed to coolness, then to dislike, and would soon, it seemed, approach open rupture; the priest's new dignities, which set him above all Margaret's councillors—who had always regarded him as their inferior (he was the son of a Burgundian commoner)—did not please the Prince, and this triumphal entry into Mechlin during his absence was a piece of defiance on the part of the new Cardinal that further irritated him.

"This Perrenot grows too great," he said now impulsively. "He has the ear of the Regent——" He checked himself, looked at his brother, who was watching him eagerly, and then added, "John, what do you think would happen if the Inquisition were set up in the Netherlands as it is in Spain?"

"The States General, the Councils, the Stadtholders would protest."

"And if their protests were of no avail?"

"Then—I do not know," said John gravely.

"The people would revolt," replied William of Orange, "for I tell you nearly all in the Netherlands are at heart of the Reformed Faith. When His Majesty delivered to me my charge, he counselled me to stamp out heresy, and he gave me several papers containing lists of those suspected—there were many hundreds of them. Some great ones I warned. And I burned the lists. But Cardinal Granvelle has already ferreted out many whose names were thereon."

"I did not know of this," exclaimed John.

"Lock it in your heart," said the Prince. "I was bred a heretic," he added, with a smile.

"You have always seemed one of us to me," returned the brother simply, "and never a true Papist."

"Oh, I am a good Catholic," said William, looking out of the window, "but I do not think any man should lose his life for his faith, nay, nor his property nor his honours. I believe in tolerance, John, and there are few of that mind."

"It would be a monstrous thing if you should become a persecutor," said Count John, "seeing our father was the first Prince to bring the Reformed Faith into Germany."

"Had I been of that inclination," replied the Prince, "I should not have made this match. What do you think was the reason of it, if not the alliance of Saxony and Cassel—these Protestant States?" He rose now and, looking very earnestly at his brother, came forward into the room.

"John," he said, narrowing his eyes a little, "it is in my heart to tell you of something I have as yet told no man. And do you keep it secret, even from our brothers, who are as yet very young."

"Speak what you wish; it stays with me," replied Count John.

"It is this then: When I and the Duke of Alva were hostages in France, there was an occasion when I was with King Henry hunting—in the forest of Vincennes it was—and we two being apart from the others, the King fell to talking of the peace between him and King Philip, and his great eagerness for the concluding of this. Then, drawing on in his discourse, he did disclose to me a deep design there was between him and my King to exterminate heretics—which design the Duke of Alva was privy to and arranging with him, and he thought I too knew of it, so discussed it with me. And it seemed that this secret project was no less than to destroy all heretics in the realms of France and Spain, and to so uproot the doctrines of Luther that they would never grow again. And this, he said, might be partly done by a general slaughter of these heretics, but the time was not yet ripe. And from his speech I understood that if one looked but askance at an image he might be cast into the flames."

"And you—what did you do?" asked John, startled.

"I feigned that I knew as he thought I did, marked and noted what he said, and breathed no word of it," replied the Prince simply, as if such self-control and astuteness were the commonest things.

Count John was silent with astonishment and interest.

"And therefore, as you remember," continued William, "as soon as I was returned I did influence the States General to beg the King to send forth the foreign soldiery, which he could not well refuse."

"Ah, it was you, not the States!" exclaimed John.

"As His Majesty guessed," smiled William. "'Not the States, but you—you!' he said,—in the second person, John. That was in a Flushing street, and I left him there and would not see him to his ship."

"But since then he has been as favourable to you as always," said Count John anxiously, "even in the matter of this marriage, which was hateful to him, he gave in and sent you a gift."

"Yet," replied the Prince, "he would put me and the other Stadtholders beneath the foot of Granvelle, who is, I do not doubt, his chosen instrument to commence this work of exterminating heresy in the States."

"And you?"

"I was much dismayed when first I heard from King Henry of this ruthless policy, for I knew it meant the ruin and death of many virtuous people; and then I resolved I would do what I could for them, especially in the Netherlands. And so I will."

Count John looked slightly surprised to hear his magnificent brother speak with such unwonted gravity.

"Why, who is to withstand King Philip and King Philip's men—such as Granvelle?" he asked rather hopelessly.

"The House of Nassau might do it," smiled William lightly.

"You do not mean to oppose the King?" cried the Count.

"Why, God forbid," said the Prince, in the same tone, "but I might oppose his policies, and I shall certainly put a stone or so in the path of my Lord Cardinal."

"I fear this marriage has done you little good after all," remarked his brother regretfully. "Here is the King and the Regent displeased, and the Landgrave of Cassel angered too. Apart from your religion, he says (his son told me), you have too many debts to take a wife."

"Those same debts must be looked to," said William, in the assurance of a man of unlimited wealth and unassailable position.

"And the story has got abroad," continued the Count ruefully, "of that banquet you gave with the cloth and plates and dishes all of sugar, and the Landgrave is spreading it round Saxony and Cassel as a proof of your great extravagance."

"And what of these festivities?" laughed William. "Will they not cost every thaler of the FrÄulein's dower that has been so much vaunted?"

Count John sighed. The Nassau family had largely built up their present position through prudent and splendid marriages, and he was sorry that his brother, who had married the richest heiress in the Netherlands for his first wife, should not have done more magnificently with his second choice, for he saw nothing to recommend Anne but her rank, her father's fame, and the possible alliance of her Protestant kinsfolk—all, Count John thought, doubtful benefit.

William came up to his brother and placed his shapely hand on his shoulder.

"These debts will be looked to," he repeated. "Wait till I return to Brussels."

The door opened hastily, and Louis and Adolphus entered, both in their light tourney harness, and laughing together from sheer gaiety and amusement.

Adolphus was equipped from head to foot in a crimson padded jousting suit studded with gilt metal nails; he was the youngest of the four, no more than a youth, noble in appearance, and wholly lovable, fairer than his brother in colouring, but of the same slenderness of make.

Both greeted William with great affection, and Louis, who was clattering in gold-embossed cuirass, cuisses, vambraces, and greaves, broke out laughing with the jest that had so diverted him and Adolphus.

"Highness, we want the old magician to foretell the future for us—he has a spirit who can reveal all things; he said he would call it if we wished, and ask what our fate would be!"

"Tush!" said John hastily, "belike it were mummery or else a trick of the Devil."

But William was always ready for curious trials and experiments, though he had strangely little belief in any such things.

"Who is this magician?" he asked gaily.

"A Frenchman who has his abode with the Elector's alchemist," replied Adolphus. "They say he has done wonderful things. The Elector declares he really has such a spirit."

"His Grace is very credulous," remarked Louis. "He will take no action but after he has consulted his charts and his tables, his wheels of fortune and his crystals."

"I believe," persisted John, "that the Devil is in it all."

"Well," declared Adolphus, "the man is coming here to-night before supper, when we shall have a little leisure."

"I will come if I may," said the Prince. "Perhaps I shall have time while Anne is with her tire-women."

He took up his hat and prepared to leave; he saw that there was no chance of a further private talk with John, and he was too much of a courtier to risk being late in his return to the town hall.

As he passed Louis and Adolphus, he put them back against the wall and laughingly criticized their appointments, while John came and leant on his shoulder.

The four brothers, all so young, so charming, so magnificent, so full of noble life and vigour, made a fair picture as they stood so, laughing together from sheer good spirits because this was the lovely morning of their days and none of them had yet known sorrow.

In their slender knightly persons, the very erect carriage of their small heads, their warm colouring, something quick and fiery in their movements, there showed a great likeness between them, proclaiming their common blood, but each was a distinct personality—the Prince, dark, dominant, superb, despite his gay smiling air; John, serious, slightly austere; Louis, graceful, charming, modest, with his long light-brown locks and laughing eyes; Adolphus, blonde, handsome, eager, very princely in bearing.

So, still laughing, they parted, William hastening across the sunny square, where every cap was lifted and every head bent to him, to the town hall.

As he approached the antechamber to his apartments, he saw Anne through an open door.

She was ready clothed for the midday repast and the tourney in a gown of violet cloth of gold veiled in falls of silver lace and finished by a ruff of pure gold thread a foot deep.

William heard her sharp voice raised, and instinctively slackened his step.

A lock of Anne's tresses had caught in the stiff edge of her ruff; one of her women in disengaging it chanced to pull the crimped hair.

Anne turned and smacked the girl's face smartly enough to bring the tears to her eyes.

The Prince saw this little episode; a new type she was indeed, this fierce little cat with her claws always ready, he thought.

As he entered the room Anne became all softness and affection and gentleness.

William saluted her rather absently, but she flushed with joy at his conventional courtly compliments which her inexperience took literally.

"Tell me of Brussels?" she implored, clinging to his arm. "What shall I do in Brussels?"

"Amuse yourself, ma mie," replied William lightly, "and learn the courtesies of the country," he added with a gentle sarcasm which was wholly unperceived by the bride.

When DuprÈs, the alchemist's crystal gazer and spirit raiser, heard that he was commanded to the lodging of the young Counts of Nassau with the object of foretelling their future, he gave one of his usual whimsical smiles, as if he despised the credulity and curiosity of those who sought him, and proceeded to pack up his magic table.

Vanderlinden, who had found his colleague's spirits more tantalizing and vexing than helpful, tried to dissuade him from putting his powers to the proof before such reckless young cavaliers "who have no respect nor taste for holy things," he said, "and mean but to mock and jest at the spirits."

But the Frenchman was a mysterious creature given to whims and impulses and secretive ways, and wholly beyond the control of the alchemist who kept him for his undoubted gifts, but found him the most trying of companions and allies.

On this occasion he made no answer to his master's protests, but continued his preparations.

"This is Count Adolphus," complained Vanderlinden. "All the while Count Louis was at Dresden he showed no wish to consult the spirits."

This was quite true. Louis of Nassau had no turn for the mystical, and the scant leisure allowed him by his brother's marriage negotiations had been employed in more full-blooded amusement than that of spirit raising. His eagerness for reckless adventure had, however, caused him to at once accede to his brother's suggestion that they should put to the test the powers of the Elector's magician (as they called him).

"I hear the Prince of Orange will be present also," said Vanderlinden, vexed, "and he is a great person and not one to be lightly brought into affairs of this kind."

DuprÈs gave no answer; his strange, dry, and rather impudent face was wrinkled with a smile.

"Well, you do it without my sanction," remarked Vanderlinden, who knew he could not control his unruly assistant, and, drawing his robes about him, he retired to his turret.

Before he set out for the Counts' house, DuprÈs, after his wont, looked up the careers of the personages who had called upon him in a great notebook which was always with him, and in which he had gathered details of all the notable people of Europe.

Of three of the brothers there was little to be said; they were too young to have had any career, and were merely great nobles, born and bred in the Reformed Faith, all unmarried, and residing in the ancestral castle at Dillenburg together with the youngest brother, Henry, and seven sisters, of whom one, Catherine, had recently married the Count of Schwartzenburg, who had been Louis's joint envoy at Dresden.

Louis himself had lived largely at Brussels under the protection of his brother, and in an official position (despite his faith) under Philip's government.

This was all there was to be said of these three, but William of Orange occupied a conspicuous and unique position, and had already had a career of exceptional brilliance.

There was much about him in DuprÈs' notebooks.

He seemed indeed Fortune's favourite.

Through the Nassaus he came of a family that was one of the most illustrious in Europe. One of their members had worn the Imperial crown; others, as Dukes of Guelders, had been sovereigns in the Netherlands hundreds of years before the House of Burgundy, to whom Philip owed his throne, had ruled there; Engelbert of Nassau had been one of the councillors of Charles the Bold; his eldest son had been the confidential friend of the great Emperor Charles V, and had largely helped to place the Imperial crown on the head of his master.

He had further increased the splendour of his house by a marriage with Claude de Chalons, heiress of her brother, Philibert, Prince of Orange; his son, RenÉ de Nassau Chalons, succeeded to the united possessions of Nassau and Orange, and, dying young and childless in the Emperor's arms at the battle of St. Dizier, bequeathed all these honours to his boy cousin William, the present Prince, and eldest son of Count William, younger brother of RenÉ's father Henry, head of the branch of Nassau Dillenburg and of Juliana of Stolberg, his wife.

The price of Charles's consent to RenÉ's will was that the young heir to such power should be brought up a Papist under his own eyes, and to this, his father, though now a Protestant, had, in the interests of his son, consented, and the young Lutheran, at the age of eleven, was sent to the Imperial Court to be educated and trained.

He soon enjoyed a remarkable degree of favour with the Emperor, and at the age of seventeen was given the hand of Anne, daughter of Maximilian van Buren and the richest heiress in the Netherlands, soon afterwards being appointed, over the heads of many tried and splendid soldiers, commander-in-chief of the Imperial forces on the frontier—a post that he filled to the Emperor's satisfaction.

He had been further distinguished by being the support of Charles on the occasion of that monarch's flamboyant public abdication, and by having been deputed to carry the Imperial Insignia to the new Emperor, Ferdinand.

Immediately on the accession of Philip he had been employed by him to negotiate the peace with France, which was soon after signed, and which he had conducted in a manner highly satisfactory to Spain, leaving the King considerably in his debt, for the peace was a triumphant one for Philip.

The Prince had been selected (with the Duke of Alva) as one of the hostages given by Spain to France, and, immediately on his return from Paris, had strenuously supported the States in their demand for the removal of Spanish troops from the Netherlands, thereby putting himself in sudden and unexpected opposition to Philip, from whom, on that King's departure from the Netherlands, he had parted with considerable coolness.

He retained, however, the Stadtholdership of three important provinces, and remained a member of the State Council who advised the Regent.

Lately, the Saxon marriage was supposed to have embittered his already strained relations with the King, who had, however, recently given his consent to the match, and even sent a sum of money to the Regent to buy a ring for the bride. He was believed to be estranged from the arbitrary and stern measures of the new Cardinal, and to favour the ancient liberties of the Netherlands and tolerance for the heretics.

For the rest he was the most magnificent grandee in the Low Countries, his splendid hospitality was famous, his table renowned in Europe, his cooks coveted by Philip—who was a greater glutton than any man in his own kingdoms—his debts were supposed to be huge, but there was never any stint in the lavish extravagance with which he kept up his princely residences, and his fortune, together with that left him by his first wife, was known to be enormous; his revenues were but one-third less than those the King drew from the Netherlands.

As Prince of Orange, he was a sovereign ruler, owing allegiance to no one; his other titles were perhaps more numerous than those any noble in Europe could boast.

As his father's heir, he was Count of Nassau and head of the Dillenburg branch of that ancient house; he was also Count of Catzenellenbogen, Count of Brabant, Marquis of Ter Veere, Viscount of Antwerp; as heir to the Orange, Beaux, and Chalons families, he claimed the kingdom of Arles, the dukedom of Gramine, three principalities, two margraveships, two viscountships, sixteen countships, more than fifty baronies, and three hundred lordships, and though most of these French titles were but shadowy honours, he drew a princely revenue from his estates in Franche-Comte, and his claim to the lands in Dauphine had been admitted. He also owned estates in Brabant, Luxembourg, and Flanders, and all the property of the Van Burens which his first wife had been able to leave him. He was a knight of the Golden Fleece—that sumptuous and princely order—a Grandee of Spain, Stadtholder of three provinces, a member of Margaret's Council, and had been, until their withdrawal, commander, with Lamoral Egmont, Prince of Gravern, of all the Spanish troops in the Netherlands, as he had been commander-in-chief during the late war with France.

Such was the outward history of this Prince, who, though still in his first youth, was already so unusually distinguished both by his fortunes, his position, his magnificence, his charm.

"One of the great ones of the earth," remarked DuprÈs, carefully locking away the notebook after having committed to memory the leading points in William's career. The spirits did not always prove tractable, and when they were dumb DuprÈs was always ready to satisfy the inquirer with a few judiciously vague replies of his own composition. He indeed cheated so often, so shamelessly, and so skilfully that Vanderlinden had lately lost all faith in him, and for this reason alone had been reluctant that DuprÈs should experiment before the young Princes.

The alchemist, whose position under the Elector was his sole revenue, was in constant fear of losing it through some trick or freakish jest on the part of his assistant.

He made, however, no further attempt to interfere (knowing well enough that it was hopeless), and towards the appointed hour DuprÈs, with the two apprentices—sour at having been summoned early from the tourney—behind him carrying the magic table, went forth into the sunny dusty streets filled with merry idle crowds in their best clothes, most of whom were discussing the prowess of the Elector at the jousts, His Grace having held the field against all comers, and shivered the spears of many a famous knight.

Reaching the Counts' lodging DuprÈs dismissed the two young men, and himself proceeded to unpack his table.

The cavaliers had not yet returned from the tourney, but DuprÈs was served very civilly with wine and comfits.

The room into which he had been admitted was a fairly small cabinet, panelled in dark oak, and looking on the garden. It could be lit by a lamp depending by a copper chain from the centre of the ceiling; there was neither fireplace nor candle sconces. The furniture was composed merely of a few black chairs, a table, and an armoir.

The spirit raiser declared himself satisfied with this chamber as the right setting for his experiment, as he modestly called it, but he desired the servants to remove the armoir, less he should be accused of having an accomplice within (it was large enough to hold a man), and also the table, as he wished to set up his own in place of it. When this was done he asked them to take away all the chairs but five, one for himself and the others for the four princes. He also requested that the shutters should be closed, the lamp lit, and silence kept without during the experience, lest some unusual noise should fright or vex the spirits.

His preparations being now complete, he set himself to nicely adjust the magic table in the interval of waiting.

This table was a curious and precious object, and DuprÈs had carried it with him through many adventures and over the greater part of Europe. It was of sweet wood, three feet high, and set on four legs, each of which was set on a seal of pure wax engraved with a mystical sign and the seven names of God, the whole put on a thick square of red and gold changeable silk; in the centre of the table was another of the seals, larger and more deeply imprinted, and over this was a red silk cover with knots of gold at the four corners; in the centre of this cloth was a large crystal ball, egg-shaped, and of a most special brightness.

DuprÈs now wrote certain characters with sacred oil on the legs of the table, and all was complete. The spirit raiser—or skryer, as he had been called in England—was himself attired in a plain black coat and breeches with velvet half-socks of a purple colour, a plain band and a black skull cap, an attire which he affected to give him an air of greater gravity.

Soon after the appointed hour, laughter, the jingle of spurs, the clink of armour sounded without, and the young Counts impetuously entered the apartment.

William of Orange, to DuprÈs' secret satisfaction, was with his brothers, but Count John was missing; in his place was a youth still in dusty armour with a face fresh as a rose. DuprÈs knew him for Duke Christopher, son of the Elector Palatine, and as this substitution upset his calculations he demanded why Count John had not come?

"He was afraid of the Devil, Dominus," replied the young Duke, as they all seated themselves, laughing, on the five chairs placed in a row ready for them.

"As to that," replied DuprÈs coldly, "I would have Your Grace know that I keep no such company. I associate with neither imps nor hell-hounds, being no conjurer nor magician, as the vulgar may suppose, but a good mathematician, alchemist, and astrologer, which are noble sciences and have accomplished great marvels, as, notably, the brazen head of Albertus Magnus—which could speak—the sphere of Archimedes, the dove of Archytas, and the wheel of Vulcan. And for myself I have seen clay birds that fly and iron insects that crawl."

With that he seated himself before the magic table, and the young Princes, who had but a little while to spare before the evening festivities called them, besought him to hasten.

The skryer looked at them over the crystal ball; they were pleasant to see in their youth, their splendour, their comeliness and gaiety, as princely and as fair a company as could well be brought together.

All were in their light armour with silk scarves and jewelled chains and ladies' favours tied to their arms, save only William, who wore a suit of green cloth of gold with pearl embroidery on the sleeves, a scarf of violet, and a mantle of black velvet. He leaned forward, his elbow on his knee, his dark face in his fine hand, looking at the skryer; at his breast was a cluster of roses, and their perfume filled the small chamber.

"Oh, ye great ones," thought DuprÈs, "what is before you but idleness, luxury, and pomp? Wherefore should ye seek to know the future—your ways are very clear set before you."

He asked one to lower the lamp, and Adolphus rose and pulled the string; a dim, but clear, light now filled the chamber.

"I would have you notice, princely seigneurs," said DuprÈs, "that I am not in communication with any but good angels; from the seven names of God proceed seven angels, and from each letter of their names proceed seven more angels—from the male letters, male angels; from the female letters, female angels. And they are unable to speak anything but the truth, coming as they do from God's footstool. They are to be regarded with awe, humility, and reverence. Which of them will come, I know not, but whoever it be, I beseech your friendly Graces to observe a decent silence and a discreet behaviour."

He then set his elbows on the table, clasped his hands about his brow, and gazed into the crystal. At first he beheld nothing but the gold curtain which usually at first concealed the spirit world from his view, and this remained for a while until he was beginning to fear that the spirits would not come to-day, and that to satisfy these young men he must resort to trickery, which was dangerous, difficult, and fatiguing.

Presently, however, the gold curtain was caught together and hurled into the centre of the globe which changed to a luminous colour, like amber with a light behind it, and began to throb and pulse with radiance, so that DuprÈs looked into an immense distance of pure gold like the strongest sunshine, troubled by changing, moving forms which seemed to turn together, mingle, and then again separate.

The globe itself gave forth a strong glow, which illuminated the head and face of the skryer as if he sat in front of a lamp, and rendered pale by contrast the light hanging above him.

Adolphus pointed out this mysterious light to the others, and they leant forward in a tense silence.

"I see," said DuprÈs, "two of the spirits, Volvangel and Kendrick—they are walking together hand in hand."

"What is their appearance?" asked Duke Christopher.

"Volvangel wears a black suit of tabinet," replied the skryer, "a little sword, and his hair falling down long, also slippers of a red colour; the other angel is more fantastical and has a doublet of white satin cut into points below the belt, and yellow hose."

"Methinks they lack dignity," said Count Louis, who had expected something more strange and awe-inspiring; "surely these are bad spirits or imps."

"They are good angels," returned DuprÈs coldly; "the ill angels have but three letters in their names; but if Your Graces are not silent these will not speak."

At this the young knights forbore, and the skryer continued to gaze into the crystal which now appeared a ball of fire.

"They speak," he said; "they reprove the princely Counts for playing with eternal mysteries in a spirit of lightness. Kendrick says, 'Is life so long that you can be so careless of time? Be careful in your comings and in your goings, lest you waste precious moments, and death come upon you unawares, and snatch you away in your prime.' Volvangel says, 'Why would you know the future? It is better not to draw the curtain.' And now they fall to pieces as if they were of ashes, and there is no more of them."

The globe was now radiating such intense light that though it was motionless it appeared to spin in its place. Duke Christopher rose and put out the lamp, but the chamber remained lit with a delicate, soft, and flickering glow.

The skryer now appeared of an ashy paleness, drops of sweat stood on his brow, his lips trembled. He spoke again in a hoarse and unnatural voice—

"Liliana has arisen; it is a female angel, very witty and wise—she is coming into the room."

A broad beam of golden light projected from the globe and fell, like the vast blade of a sword, against the dimmer light of the chamber.

"It is Liliana," repeated the skryer. "She runs about the room."

There was a moment's utter silence, then Adolphus unexpectedly cried out—

"I see her! She wears a gown of flowered tabinet and yellow hair rolled up in front and hanging long behind!"

"That is she," said DuprÈs. "She is standing now by the knee of His Highness, and she bids him remember that the angels of God are more to be believed than any priest or Pope."

"She fades!" cried Adolphus. "She changes into a wheel of fire—she breaks—she goes!"

"She has returned to the crystal," said the skryer. "She asks what you want of her?"

"Let us know the future," said Count Louis. "Let us know the fate of the four who sit here—not from wanton curiosity or irreverent meddling in matters beyond us—but that, with God's help, we may know how to shape our lives as becomes men and Princes."

"She says," replied DuprÈs, in the same tense tone, "that it is best you should not know, but she can answer your questions—one question to each knight."

Adolphus spoke first—

"Shall I gain honour before I die?"

"The answer is—'Great honour.'"

"Who will our wives be?" asked Duke Christopher.

"The answer is—'All three shall die unwed.'"

Louis of Nassau, almost as pale as the skryer, raised his fair face as he put his question—

"Will the House of Nassau endure, or fall into decay?"

"The answer is—'This House will endure as long as there are Princes on earth.'"

William of Orange spoke now; it was the first word he had said since the skryer had commenced—

"What manner of death shall we die?"

"Liliana says she may not tell, but that in the crystal will come visions."

"Enough, enough," cried Adolphus, rising. "I will not meddle with these matters——"

But the others caught him back to his seat.

"Hear it to the end," said Louis.

The strong beam had now disappeared from the globe, which burnt suddenly dim with a sullen fire that lit the red table-cover and left the rest of the room in darkness; the skryer now seemed to be in a trance or swoon, he swayed to and fro the crystal, his face was blank as virgin paper, his eyes like glass.

"I see blood," he muttered, "nothing but blood and black horses—and men. It is a battle—the sun is setting—again the blood, there are four knights trampled under the horses—one is taken from the mÊlÉe and his bones laid in holy ground. The other three disappear—there is search for them, they are not found. They are all young. The blood and smoke clears. I see trees, I see an older man, worn, grey, murdered—there is great lamentation—and now the black curtain falls—falls."

All the light in the globe went out, and the skryer dropped forward across the magic table. William sprang up, opened the door, and called for lights.

A servant instantly brought a lamp.

Louis and Christopher were calmly in their places, but Adolphus had his head bowed forward in his hands and was shuddering.

"Herr Jesus! I saw her!" he murmured. "A little maid—and is there a bloody death for all of us?"

But William's serene laugh, the flood of light, the stir and move of ordinary things about them swept away the sense of dread and mystery; the skryer sighed, stirred from his stupor, and began packing up his appliances. He did not seem disposed to speak and the knights did not urge it; they severally left to change their armour, on which still lay the dust of the tourney.

The Prince lingered last; he put a purse of thalers into DuprÈs' hand and thanked him courteously.

"Seigneur," said the skryer with emotion, "I will tell no one but I will tell you, who are a very prudent Prince, that those knights I saw slain had the faces of your brothers—of Count Louis, Count Adolphus, and one who is not here, and Duke Christopher."

"And the murdered man?" asked William, turning on him his powerful eyes.

"It was Your Highness," replied DuprÈs, bowing his head.

"All of us!" said the Prince lightly. "Was it John you saw, or Henry—that third cavalier?"

"It was not His Grace, John, but one younger whom I have never seen."

"It was a fearful vision," said William, "and maybe it was but some distempered fancy. Yet," he added, with sudden gravity, "if honour called, the House of Nassau would make even the sacrifice you saw prefigured."

He smiled at the skryer in the fashion which made all men his friends, and hastened away to the festivals at the town hall.

Again the city belfries rocked with the ringing of the joy-bells, again the summer night was lit with splendid illuminations, and all the sweet languor of this rich season of the year was blended with the magnificence of princely rejoicings.

The young grandee crossing the town square lifted his eyes to the stars and gazed at those three which form a diamond sword in the heavens.

After the third day of tourney had completed the marriage festivities, the Prince of Orange, his bride, and their train—swelled now by Anne's attendants—set out for Brussels.

Vanderlinden was among the magnificent assembly who wished them God-speed, and he found occasion to hand RÉnÈe le Meung a charm in the shape of the figure seven cut in jade and set with little studs of gold. This would, he said, keep her from harm while she resided in Brussels, for seven was the lucky number of that city which was under the direct influence of the seven planets, and owned seven churches, seven gates, and seven senators.

RÉnÈe thanked him with tears in her eyes and a sad smile on her lips as she turned to leave the land that had been a refuge, even if in exile, and set her face towards her own country which was so full of peril for her and contained unutterable memories.

Already, from those in the Prince's train and from such Saxons as had been in Brussels, she had heard much of the state of affairs in the Low Countries. The Inquisition, which the late Emperor had established in the Netherlands, had always been resisted, notably in Brabant (into two of the provinces it had never been introduced), with such effect that, though an avowed heretic (as was RÉnÈe's father) was certain to be apprehended, yet many who were not of the orthodox faith had managed to live quietly and unmolested. Now, however, it was being enforced with great severity by Philip's orders and Granvelle's warm support, and the chief Inquisitor, Peter Titelmann, was performing his office with the ruthlessness and cruelty of Torquemada himself.

Every one even suspected of heresy, anyone who did not bow low enough when the Host passed, anyone who read the Bible or ventured to criticize the priests or preach any contrary doctrines, was at once seized by Titelmann, accused before his secret Tribunal from which there was no appeal, tortured to force a confession, and finally put to death in the most horrid fashion the monks could devise.

Already this monstrous tyranny was spreading over the Low Countries with a combined force and power impossible to resist, the religious force of the Pope, the secular force of the King behind it. Already Titelmann, Granvelle, the Regent, the King, were rejoicing that they were tearing up by the roots the seed that Martin Luther had planted; already some of the most splendid and prosperous towns in Europe were being devastated with executions, fines, confiscations, and the spectacle of tortured men, women, and children flung living into the flames with Marot's hymns on their lips and the light of undiminished faith in their eyes.

And this was only the beginning.

There was no length to which the King was not prepared to go to re-establish the pure Catholic faith in his dominions. He was willing to depopulate cities, render barren the countryside, ruin the trade from which he drew so handsome a revenue, force into revolt the people who had been his father's faithful subjects—in brief, to utterly destroy and scatter one of the bravest, most prosperous, most intelligent, most thrifty nations of Europe rather than see them tainted with the doctrines of Luther or Calvin.

And to this resolve Cardinal Granvelle gave his enthusiastic support.

RÉnÈe heard enough of the prelate to realize that he was nearly as dreaded and disliked as Titelmann himself, and that to him was ascribed the enforcing of the Inquisition and the creation of the hated new bishoprics by which the supremacy of the true faith was to be enforced and the organization of the Inquisition maintained. It was from the creation of these bishoprics and his own elevation to the See of Mechlin and then to the Cardinal's Hat, that the growth of the breach between Anthony Perrenot and his one-time patron, the Prince of Orange, might be traced; and RÉnÈe learnt that William, together with Lamoral Egmont, Prince of Gravern and Stadtholder of Artois and Flanders (abetted by Philip de Montmorency, Count Hoorne, then at the Spanish Court), had actually written a letter to Philip protesting against the increasing insolence and presumption of the Cardinal, and that the King on receiving the message had warmly defended Granvelle, and so abused Count Hoorne that that nobleman had hardly been able, from wrath and amazement, to leave the royal presence. These circumstances, which were common talk in the Netherlands, and rousing immense interest and speculation, caused RÉnÈe to regard her new master with added curiosity, with a growing respect; from the first moment she had seen him she had felt his charm, now she began to surmise his power.

Along the journey she marked his patience, gentleness, and courtesy with Anne's unreasonable jealous affection, peevish tempers, and fits of hysteric gloom. Some of the other women laughed at so much softness, but RÉnÈe admired this gentleness in one whom she knew could be masterful and believed could be fierce, but it had the effect of rousing her former half-compassionate indifference towards Anne into active dislike.

Never had the sickly bad-tempered girl seemed so hateful to RÉnÈe as she did now when plaguing the husband she professed to adore, chattering over her coming triumphs in Brussels, and boasting of her new rank and dignities. She seemed to see in the magnificent and tumultuous scene on to which she was about to enter only a stage on which to display her own enormous vanity, and her infinite petty questions and speculations as to her position in relation to the Regent and the ladies of her Court fatigued RÉnÈe almost beyond endurance, for the waiting-woman's mind was full of the great problems now agitating her native country, and of the coming struggle between Prince and Cardinal, of which Anne was so entirely in ignorance.

When they reached the beautiful plains of Brabant, and the hill-built capital, Anne fell ill from the excess of her own spleen and passions, and it was on a litter that she was carried into her husband's gorgeous home on the heights of Brussels.

This was an establishment that filled RÉnÈe with astonishment, and was indeed much more splendid then even the Saxon Princess had ever expected.

Situated in the most beautiful part of the ornate and rich city, and amid the residences of other great nobles, the Nassau palace formed a fitting scene for the festivals, the hospitality, the pageants provided by one of the most wealthy and generous Princes in Europe.

The turreted and gabled mansion, crowned by a tower or belfry, and built in the most elaborate style of Gothic art, stood in fine gardens filled with statues, fountains, pleasant walks, exotic shrubs, summer-houses, and fishponds, all laid out at great expense and lavishly maintained.

The rooms, halls, galleries, and cabinets were most handsomely and luxuriously furnished with all the famous rich splendour of the Netherlands; tapestries, hangings, pictures by the most renowned artists; carpets, rugs, objects from the East and the Indies; all the ornate beauty that taste could desire and wealth execute, distinguished the dwelling of the Prince of Orange.

The household, with stewards, secretaries, clerks, musicians, chaplains, falconers, huntsmen, gardeners, cooks, valets, pages, servants, and now augmented by Anne's women, amounted to over a thousand persons, and one of the most lavish and famous features of the establishment was the perpetual banquet kept in one of the halls, from which extravagant hospitality was indiscriminately extended to all comers at any hour of the day and night. The dishes, fruits, confectionery, and wines were constantly replenished, but never removed.

In this household, beside which that of the Elector was simple indeed, RÉnÈe felt herself utterly alien and overwhelmed; but during the first days of her residence there, while in attendance on Anne's nervous illness, she observed, as closely as she was able, him who had already so excited her curiosity, namely, the Prince.

She found he was good-tempered with all, loved by all, extravagant, reckless of his own interests, and very much the master.

From her high window, round which the pigeons flew, she would wait for a glimpse of those who came to wait on him: Egmont, the Stadtholder of Artois and Flanders, as magnificent a lord as William himself, and of almost as proud and ancient descent; Count Hoorne, another great seigneur, but a sombre and gloomy man; Brederode, handsome, reckless, usually inflamed with wine; Count Hoorne's brother, the Seigneur de Montigny; and De la Marck, the Seigneur de Lumey.

And RÉnÈe soon perceived that these great nobles were all animated with one object, and that object hatred of Cardinal Granvelle.

How far the Prince was heading these malcontents she could not tell; she noticed that though he was so gay, and appeared so open, he was not reckless in speech, and she divined that he was reserved and prudent in all serious matters; she believed, too, that his position was difficult, even perilous. If so, certainly his new wife contributed nothing to soothe either difficulties or perils; indeed, her behaviour would have hampered any man. In her vanity and arrogance she was ungracious to his friends; she quarrelled with Egmont's wife, who was the sister of the Elector Palatine, on the question of precedence; and she chose to consider herself injured because the Regent kept her waiting when she first went to pay her duty.

But though she was behaving like a fretful child, she could not fail to be an important pawn in the great game that was beginning to be played in the Netherlands, and RÉnÈe wondered who would try to rouse her to a sense of her position, for at present she was showing capricious favour to the Cardinal's party by patronizing the wives of his creatures, Aerschot and Barlaymont.

The warning, or advice, came most unexpectedly from Sabina of Bavaria, Countess of Egmont, Princess of Gravern—the lady whose only previous acquaintance with Anne had been haughty disputes as to their order of precedency.

But Egmont's wife was not the woman to endanger her husband's interests by feminine vanities; she came personally to offer her friendship to Anne and to instil the good counsel the Saxon Princess so sorely needed.

Anne, though tolerably flattered at the visit, received her rival with the haughtiness she deemed due to her station, retaining with her RÉnÈe and a little German girl who waited on her, and barely rising when the Countess (she was generally known, as was her husband, by her prouder title of Egmont) entered her presence.

RÉnÈe had been told by her mistress that Sabina of Bavaria was an old woman, ill-favoured, but the waiting-woman found that the Countess was as splendid as Anne was mean, as courtly as Anne was rude, as fascinating as Anne was unattractive. After the first few moments of commonplace compliments, it was plain that the Princess of Orange did not know how to behave; she sat in the window-seat eating nuts, which she held in the lap of her brilliant blue satin gown, and the shells of which she cast from her window.

The Countess of Egmont, leaning back in her dark chair, her delicate tired face framed in the high rich ruff, her soft hair threaded with pearls, in all graceful, composed, and gracious, surveyed the Princess through half-closed long eyes and, seeing that all subtlety would be wasted on Anne, came directly to the point.

"Your Highness has already some knowledge of how matters stand in Brussels?" she asked.

"None at all," replied Anne flippantly.

"Naturally Your Highness has had little opportunity," said the Countess pleasantly. "I have been some while at the Court and can enlighten you on some particulars."

"It is best for ladies not to meddle in these matters," remarked Anne.

"Truly, we women play a poor small part in these great affairs," smiled the other lady. "None the less we may be of some use and help. You have observed the great discontent there is against Cardinal Granvelle, how all the seigneurs are against him, especially your lord and mine?"

"The Prince does not talk business with me," said Anne.

The Countess bit her pretty lip.

"I speak as a sister of a Protestant to a Protestant," she continued. "Your ladies are of the Reformed Faith?" she added, glancing at RÉnÈe and the other girl.

"Oh yes," said the Princess, roused at last, "but I assure Your Grace that we shall give no trouble. I have promised to live Catholicly, and I will keep my word."

"I did not mean to speak of that," returned the Countess gently, "only to say that his princely Highness, your husband, has always been considered too lenient to those of the Reformed Faith, has always Count Louis with him, and continually others of his relations who are Lutheran, and this has been used as a handle against him by the Cardinalists, and will be even more so now that he has a Protestant wife."

"And what is the upshot of this speech?" asked Anne, hardly pretending to disguise her impatience.

Egmont's wife replied with the serene grandeur that was so infinitely patient.

"To explain I must weary Your Highness with some business. Cardinal Granvelle is already endeavouring to enforce the Inquisition in the Netherlands—some hundreds have already suffered under his instigation. Now the late Emperor, and the Queen Mary, the late Regent, did promise this should not be, and to break those oaths is against the conscience of many good Catholics and of most of the great lords, save only Aerschot, Barlaymont, and Meghem, who fawn on the Cardinal; but Granvelle wishes to enforce the edicts issued by the late Emperor against heretics, and this the seigneurs consider a fatal course. So there is a powerful party against this priest, and a letter has already been writ to the King against him."

"I hear he is very upstart and of low birth," remarked Anne, who was incapable of grasping the wide aspects of the question put before her.

"That is no matter," smiled Sabina; "he is favourite at Madrid. And he rules the Netherlands, not Madame Parma."

"I heard the Seigneur Brederode speak of him the other day," said Anne, with an affected laugh. "He made some fine jests on him! He said he wore those fox-tails in his cap as a memory of the old fox, as he called Granvelle, and frequented the masks in a Cardinal's gown to do His Eminence a spite!"

"The Seigneur Brederode is reckless," returned the Countess gravely, "and does us little good."

"Oh, I think he is amusing," said Anne perversely. "He told me some fine stories of the Cardinal," and she laughed coarsely.

Sabina knit her brows.

"Beware of laughing at the Seigneur Brederode's tales," she said. "I tell you his pastimes are dangerous."

Anne shrugged her shoulders as she replied—

"What has your princely Grace to say at the end of this?"

Egmont's wife flushed; she was not used to the rudeness she was so patiently enduring from this ill-bred girl.

"I wish Your Highness to be one of us," she said, "to help us. To be ductile, circumspect, to submit to the Regent—to give no confidences to Aerschot's wife."

"She is my husband's kinswoman," interrupted Anne.

"She is of the Cardinal's party," flashed the Countess, "and they are none of them to be trusted. I appeal to you," she added with dignity, "to stand by us, who are standing by those of your faith. I tell you, King Philip is only waiting for the decision of the Council at Trent to force all his subjects into conformity with the ancient faith—yea, even at the price of depopulating the Netherlands. I tell you no liberty, no charter, no privilege will be safe, nay, not 'the joyous entry' itself, and we must all turn into persecutors—scourgers in Granvelle's hand—or be ruined."

Anne was now a little frightened; she dimly wondered what her own position would be if all these fearful edicts against heretics were enforced.

"What can I do?" she asked foolishly.

"Bear yourself discreetly—flatter the Regent, eschew the Cardinalists—do not encourage Seigneur Brederode."

"I am sure no one takes any notice of what I do," returned Anne. In her heart she was sorry she was not an orthodox Catholic; the sufferings of fellow-heretics did not move her in the least, but she was alarmed at the thought of being involved in any of their misfortunes.

"The actions of the daughter of the Prince who forced the Peace of Passau from the late CÆsar must always be important."

Anne was flattered at this; she was always inordinately proud of her famous father, while not sympathizing in the least with the principles or the actions that had made him glorious.

"I will do what I can in the matters you tell me of," she said, "but it was never my husband's wish that I should be troubled with grave business of any kind."

Sabina took this ungracious concession as the utmost she was likely to get; she rose, feeling that the whole interview had been rather useless.

Anne rose too, and as she stood, the bright cruel light of the window over her, the other woman noted afresh how crooked she was, how sickly, how plain, and was sorry.

And over Anne's shoulder she glanced into the gardens which showed through the open casement, and saw the Prince playing tennis in the sunlit court; his gay spirits, his splendid health, his pleasant handsomeness formed a bitter contrast with his wife. The Countess, with the generosity of the woman who has everything, felt sorry indeed for this woman who had nothing but a position she could not hold, and a husband she could not please.

The ladies parted, and Anne called for wine and sugar, mixed herself a sweet drink, and presently fell into a flushed sleep in the window-seat. She was still asleep when the Prince came up from his game.

He looked at her in silence, rather sternly, rejected RÉnÈe's offer to wake her, and went away.

The waiting-woman kept her distasteful vigil during the rest of the long sunny afternoon. The little German girl crept away; the sounds of the palace came dimly through the shut doors, without the pigeons flew to and fro with a sharp flap of wings, and RÉnÈe sat motionless, with locked hands and compressed lips, her mind and soul in the struggle between Granvelle who stood for the tyranny of Philip and the power of Rome, and the great nobles who stood for the liberty of the Netherlands and the protection of the wretched heretics.

The Governess of the Netherlands, Margaret, daughter of the late Emperor and wife of Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma, sat in her chair of state in the small chamber leading to the council room, and before her were the three Netherland nobles who were the avowed enemies of Granvelle, and who had complained so long and haughtily that they were no longer consulted and that the Regent took advice solely from the Cardinal and his creatures, Barlaymont, President of the Council of Finance, and Viglius, President of the Privy Council.

Margaret favoured the Cardinal; he had an immense influence over her, and she knew him to be as deep in her brother Philip's counsels as his father had been for thirty years in those of the Emperor; but the situation in the Netherlands was increasingly difficult, and she dared not alienate men of such importance as the three that were before her now—the brilliant Egmont, victor of Gravelines and St. Quentin; Hoorne, Admiral of Flanders; and Orange, the most powerful of the Princes and Stadtholders in the States.

She sat now erect and a little drawn back against the burnished leather of her seat, rather in the attitude of one at bay. Her presence was majestic and graceful, with something of the commanding fascination which had made her father so popular; but the Flemish blood of her commoner mother told too—she lacked refinement and softness; her features were bold and haughty, her brow heavy, her upper lip shaded with dark hair; her hands were large and strong, and seemed ill-adapted for the embroidery they now held; indeed, her most notable accomplishment was horsemanship, as it had been that of her aunt, the former Regent, Mary of Hungary.

Her attire of gold brocade and black velvet, stiff cap and flowing veil of black tissue folded over her shoulders, was more rich than tasteful; she wore no jewellery nor adornments, for she affected a masculine strength of character and disdain of detail.

Her needle went in and out of the embroidery; but the work was largely a pretence, and the flower she was making was stitched false, for her full brown eyes were continually glancing from one to the other of the three before her. Count Hoorne was speaking; in words slow but full of intense feeling he was putting before her the nobles' case against the Cardinal.

The Admiral stood by the pointed window on which gleamed the arms of Brabant in the leaded glass—a grave and gloomy figure, dark and careless in attire, with a haughty and rather sad face, brooding eyes, a discontented brow, and black fan-shaped beard.

Standing behind him, leaning against a side table covered with a small cloth of Persia, was Lamoral Egmont, the famous soldier, the popular grandee, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Stadtholder of Brabant and Artois.

Half his exceptional popularity he owed to his unusual good looks, his beautiful head with the brown curls carried so splendidly, his soldier's figure tall and strong, his noble port, the brilliancy of his attire. His silk and brocades, jewels and gold, showed the more gorgeous now in contrast with Hoorne.

Leaning against the wall near him was the Prince of Orange; he had a quiet air, and his head was bent forward on his ruff. He was not so magnificent as Egmont, though his appointments were very splendid.

And always Margaret's eyes were flashing up covertly from her sewing and measuring the sombre proud speaker, the gorgeous grandee behind him, and that third figure with the bent head.

Hoorne finished at length, bowed to the Regent, and looked at his colleagues.

"You bring very vague accusations, princely count," said Margaret. Her voice was heavy and she spoke haltingly, for she was at ease with no language save Italian. "It would seem that there is nothing against the Cardinal but private spites and malices."

"There is against him," replied Lamoral Egmont, "that he usurps our place in the Council, as we have endeavoured to show Your Royal Grace."

The embroidery trembled in Margaret's fingers. "You blame him for much that he has not done," she said "as, the bishoprics."

"Do you tell us," cried Hoorne impetuously, "that the Cardinal did not urge these bishoprics at Rome?"

"Nay," replied the Duchess. "They were intended in the Emperor's time—before I, or the Cardinal, came to the Netherlands."

"At least he enforces them and enjoys the finest," persisted Hoorne, unconvinced.

Margaret lifted her bold eyes; they were angry eyes now.

"He enforces them," she said, "because it is His Majesty's wish, and the Cardinal is loyal—I would all were as he! And why are these bishoprics so odious? Methinks they should be comforting to good Catholics"—she darted a sharp glance at the Prince of Orange—"since they are designed to strengthen the ancient faith and rout out heresy."

"They are designed to support and spread the Inquisition," replied Hoorne bluntly, "and that is a thing odious to these States."

"The Spanish Inquisition shall not be introduced," answered Margaret. "That has been promised."

"There is no need to introduce it," said the Admiral dryly. "The Inquisition of the Netherlands is more severe."

"The people will not take it, indeed they will not," said the Stadtholder of Brabant earnestly. "As witness the disturbances, riots, and revolts at Titelmann's executions."

"We are not talking of the people," replied the Regent, with bitter vexation, "nor of their grievances, but of the great lords who foster all this sedition, and seem to have a marvellous sympathy for heretics."

"We have a marvellous respect for the charters and privileges of the States which are in our keeping," said the Prince of Orange, "and which the Inquisition utterly defies and overrules."

Tears of vexation sprang into Margaret's eyes; more than either of the other two was this Prince vexatious to her.

"Ah, Prince," she said, "we know your dispositions. You hide yourself behind the States, behind charters and privileges; but, as my brother said in the matter of the Spanish troops, it is not the States, but you—and I perceive it, never believe but that I perceive it."

William very slightly smiled.

"I have never failed in duty to the King," he replied, "nor loyalty to the Church. And in protesting against the Cardinal and his measures, I do believe, Madame, that I serve the best interests of both."

"It is well," said Margaret bitterly, "for you to speak of loyalty to the Church when your palace shelters heretics and you have a Lutheran wife."

"I had His Majesty's consent to my marriage," said William quietly.

"A reluctant one," returned the Regent, "and His Majesty is still not pleased that you should choose the daughter of the Elector Maurice—but that is past," she added sharply, then, with a thrust at the daughter of the man who had humiliated her father, "though we think the match still imprudent, and marvel at it more than formerly."

William received this reference to his wife with courteous indifference, and Margaret continued with raised voice, the deep colour mounting to her hard face and the embroidery lying forgotten on her lap.

"Methinks it would be more dutiful and fitting if you offered to help me with your advices and influences instead of filling my ears with complaints of the only man who is useful to me."

Lamoral Egmont drew his magnificent person erect.

"We have no opportunity of aiding Your Grace," he said, "since we have been excluded so long from your Councils."

Margaret trembled with anger.

"What do you want of me?" she asked, driven to desperation.

That was too complex a matter for either the Prince of Orange or Count Hoorne to commit themselves to, but Lamoral Egmont, who was neither cautious nor wise, answered instantly—

"The withdrawal of Cardinal Granvelle from the Netherlands."

The Duchess rose in her agitation, sweeping her needlework to the ground.

"Ho, you ask no little thing of me!" she cried in her indignation. "How think you the King would take that request?"

"Let Your Grace make it," replied the Stadtholder of Brabant, with a touch of insolence. "And, while we wait an answer from Madrid, let Your Grace counsel the Cardinal to comport himself with less overbearing arrogance."

"Arrogance!" flashed Margaret. "What of the Count Brederode, who nightly, when in drink, sports Cardinal's attire at some public mask, and mocks and flouts His Eminence with huge indecency? What of the pasquils that reach my very closet and are thrust under the Cardinal's pillow? What of these vile rhetoric plays which no punishment can stop and which jeer at all holy things?"

"We know none of any of this," declared Hoorne, with rising anger.

"Henry Brederode is not my charge," said Egmont, "nor do I control his frolics."

Margaret stopped short before him.

"What of the fox-tails in your own cap?" she asked. "You wear them openly in the street. Do you think that I do not know of these things?"

The Prince of Orange here interposed.

"If the bishoprics and the Inquisition, the ancient placards and edicts, are to be forced on the people, there is no chance of the States passing the new taxes."

These words instantly brought the Regent to the practical part of the matter, and affected her more than any of the proud speeches of Egmont and Hoorne. The finances of the Netherlands were in a miserable condition. Philip was always demanding money, being continually embarrassed himself, and Margaret feared for her prestige, if not for her position, if she could not supply it; and cordially as she agreed with her brother's proposal to exterminate all heresy in his dominions, and greatly as she admired Granvelle's plans to carry the Royal wishes into effect, she was shrewd enough to see that the Prince had pointed out a real difficulty, and one that she had lately been acutely conscious of.

At the same time, she disliked the Prince bitterly for calling her attention to this stumbling-block.

"Do you threaten disobedience—rebellion?" she asked.

"I threaten nothing," replied William, looking at her calmly. "I speak of what I know of the States. The Stadtholders will not enforce the Inquisition, the people will not submit to it. Rebellion? Who knows? The provinces have revolted before, Madame, against the House of Hapsburg."

Margaret was silent, her eyes narrowed with anger. Her sincere convictions were with the Cardinal. As an ardent Catholic, she loathed the heretics; as a grateful subject of her brother, she wished to obey his wishes. She was loyal, industrious, and ambitious to render a good account of her charge. She believed the men before her, and those whom they represented, to be greedy, jealous self-seekers, and she despised them as mere worldly courtiers; but to the Prince of Orange's argument she was obliged to listen. She was shrewd enough to see that these men knew the Netherlanders as neither she, Philip, nor Granvelle did; and she respected the abilities of the Prince of Orange.

She stood eyeing them all; her hand on her hip, her head well up.

"We cannot obey His Majesty in both things," continued William. "We cannot enforce the edicts and raise the revenues."

Margaret knew this to be so true that she controlled her choler, though her eyes were bright with anger.

"The placards will not be enforced," she replied. "His Majesty waits the decision of the Council of Trent—if that allow a certain latitude to heretics, His Majesty will obey."

"If not?" asked William.

The Duchess flung out her hands with a gesture of annoyance and desperation.

"How do I know what the King will do? I am here to execute his orders. I can but ask that the Inquisitors deal gently until some decision is known."

The three grandees took this as a concession, almost a confession of defeat on the part of Margaret, as it indeed was; nothing but a deep sense of the difficulties and perils of her position could have wrung such words from her.

"And Your Grace will advise moderation to the Cardinal?" asked William, taking up his hat.

"Do that errand yourself, noble Prince, since you are responsible," replied the Regent keenly.

William unexpectedly laughed, and turned his charming face with a gay look of amusement towards the angry lady.

"Truly I will," he said. "His Eminence and I used to know each other well, and I cannot think that old friendship worn so thin that he would refuse me an hour's hospitality at La Fontaine."

Margaret saw that she had been betrayed into an imprudence.

"Do what you will," she said, "but on your own authority."

"Your Grace is vexed," remarked Hoorne, "but we have done nothing but our plain duty."

"God grant Your Grace may come to see it so," added the courteous Egmont.

"And may He set great prudence and clemency in your heart, Madame," said the Prince, still smiling, "for we stand on the edge of chance, and may easily mis-tread."

Margaret dismissed them as haughtily as she dared, and as soon as they had gone sat down to write an agitated letter to Philip, full of the obstinacy of the Netherlands, the insolence of the grandees, the impossibility of obtaining money, and the virtues of the much-abused Cardinal.

The three grandees mounted and rode along the city heights where their homes lay among pleasant parks and beautiful gardens; as they ascended the steep, winding streets they could look back at the town lying in the hollow, ornate and gorgeous, proud and serene beneath them.

The twin towers of Saint Gudule rose majestically from above the clustered house roofs, below them soared the immense spire of the Town Hall, and in the blue cloudiness and golden light of the late summer afternoon dozens of gilt weathercocks swung in the gentle breeze and glittered in the sun, and in and out of the crevices of the gables flashed the white wings of innumerable pigeons.

The Prince of Orange glanced often at this prospect of the fair town; but Lamoral Egmont's eyes were for the bending knee and lowered head of passers-by, the curtsies of women spinning at the doors, the bright eyes of maidens peeping with admiration from behind the chequered casement blinds; and the Admiral's gaze was straight before him, as if he saw nothing.

"Think you the Regent meant what she said?" he asked at length.

"I think she was frightened," said the Stadtholder of Brabant.

"She is not a clever woman," remarked the Prince of Orange. He turned his head stiffly in the great ruff and smiled at Hoorne. "I think she will render an ill account of her charge. She grows more confused every day."

"Why did His Majesty send a woman at all?" complained Hoorne fiercely.

"Because he wanted one not too strong," replied William. "It were wise to endeavour to restrain Brederode," he added. "His jests against the Cardinal are very daring, and may involve us all."

"Who is to argue with Brederode?" asked Egmont. "He and De la Marck are beyond all reason; and if their jests vex Granvelle, I am not the man to stop them."

"Granvelle smiles at jests; there are better ways to discomfit him than the drunken frolics of Brederode," returned William.

The conversation ceased, for they had entered a narrow street where their voices could easily be heard. Their talk turned on falconry.

"I wish I could get away for a while," said William. "The Elector gave me the prettiest hunting dog, as white as snow, and I would very willingly try him in the campaign. If I am to be ruined by the falconers, I would use them!" he laughed.

"Herr Jesus! how they cost!" sighed Lamoral Egmont, who was even deeper in debt than the Prince. "Never were the ducats so hard to come by, never were they so much needed."

"Granvelle has the ducats," broke out Hoorne, regardless of prudence. "The abbeys, benefices, and plunder that have come his way would set us all at ease."

And the Admiral's swarthy face darkened with wrath and jealousy; indeed, Granvelle's persistent greed, and the lavish manner in which Philip satisfied it, was the chief reason of the hatred in which the nobles held the Cardinal, as his supposed patronage of the bishoprics and the Inquisition was the chief reason for the hatred of the people.

William lifted his brows and smiled meaningly; Lamoral Egmont shrugged his shoulders as if he could not bear to consider the subject.

And so they went their way slowly, their equipments shining in the sun. The children ran to the doors to look after them, and the women whispered, "There go the two Stadtholders and the Admiral! Look what splendid princes they are!"

Anthony Perrenot, Archbishop of Mechlin, Cardinal Granvelle, chief adviser to the Regent and the chief reliance of Philip in the Netherlands, as he was the chief object of the detestation of the Netherlanders, grandees and people alike, spent most of his time in his beautiful country house outside the gates of Brussels, surrounded by all that elegant luxury and worldly extravagance which particularly aroused the wrath of his enemies.

His position with the King his master was as secure as any man's could be with Philip, and he flattered himself that he had an influence not easily shaken over the mind of the Regent, who was by no means the strong and masculine character she appeared, but one easily influenced, as Philip well knew when he sent her to the Netherlands with Granvelle to stand behind her chair and pull the strings of government over her shoulder; he had also some supporters among the nobles, notably the Duke of Aerschot, Barlaymont, and Viglius.

For the rest, he stood alone in an atmosphere of hatred, contempt, and insult, even perhaps peril, for he believed that he was in constant danger of assassination. But the Burgundian priest preserved his serene calm, for he was absolutely fearless, sincerely loyal to his master and his Church, and intensely ambitious; and courage, loyalty, and ambition combined to hold him steadfastly in the place to which all three had called him and now kept him.

On this day of the hot waning autumn he finished his usual voluminous dispatch to Philip with particular pleasure, for he had been able to give his master definite news of the misdeeds of his enemies, against whom he had been cunningly and gently insinuating complaints for some while past.

That morning Barlaymont had come to him with the information that he had been approached to join a league of the grandees, the sole object of which was to force the recall or retirement of the Cardinal. Barlaymont had not only refused to join, but had instantly disclosed all he knew to Granvelle, who thus had been enabled to inform his master that the chiefs of this league were Orange, Hoorne, and Egmont, and that all the nobles had joined them with the exception of Aerschot, Aremberg, and Meghem.

Barlaymont's information had not come as a surprise to Granvelle; he knew perfectly well that the grandees were working by intrigue and open opposition for his downfall, but he was glad that they had committed themselves by this league, and pleased that Barlaymont had proved so faithful a tool.

He added to his letter a complaint of the way in which the Marquis of Berghen, Stadtholder of Hainault, Valenciennes, and Cambray, and Hoorne's brother, Baron of Montigny, Stadtholder of Tournay, refused to carry out the decrees of the Inquisition in their several provinces. He advised His Majesty to add these two names Berghen and Montigny to those of Orange, Egmont, and Hoorne as dangerous men.

He also added that Viglius, though his loyalty was unquestioned, was becoming frightened at the storm raised in the Netherlands by the Inquisition and the rumour that the late Emperor's edicts against heretics were to be enforced, and was counselling moderation.

The Minister then sealed up his letter and went out into his exquisite gardens, where, in consequence of the continued great heat, his dinner was laid on a marble table of beautiful Greek workmanship which stood beneath a chestnut tree now covered with tawny and golden foliage. To-day the Cardinal took his midday meal alone; the great nobles had long since ceased to accept his hospitality, and he was not always in the mood to entertain those of the lesser sort who still cared to come.

His keen, intelligent mind, highly accomplished and learned, did not disdain its own company; he found the cultured man's pleasure in a luxurious solitude.

Seating himself in the gilt chair, softly cushioned in red, set for him, he glanced with pleasure at the cool white table flecked with sunshine and the shadows of the great chestnut leaves, at the crystal bottles of amber and ruby-coloured wine, at the curious twisted glasses stained with opal hues like a foam bubble, the gold service with jade handles, the plates and dishes of porcelain as fine and glossy as an egg-shell, the napkin of Brussels lace rich with a design of lilies, the honey-coloured loaves lying in their snowy linen, the fruit reposing on ice in the delicate silver basket. The Cardinal was never wearied in his refined enjoyment of the elegancies of life.

As he sat over his luxurious repast admiring the mellow light of the garden and the way his Grecian fauns and dancers showed their marble limbs among the exotic shrubs of laurel, myrtle, citron, and bay, his secretary came across the grass with a paper in his hand.

"Another pasquil?" smiled the Cardinal.

"A fellow passing, Eminence," replied the priest, "found this thrust into the bars of the gate."

"Give him a piece of money," returned the Cardinal carelessly, "and pray that the hand that put it there be not the same as took it down."

"Shall I leave it?" asked the secretary. "It is, as usual, very foolish."

"Leave it," replied his master. "You know I make a collection of them."

The priest's dark figure returned through the sunshine, and Granvelle sipped his wine, bright as a diluted jewel in the opal clouded glass, while his serene eyes rested on the sheet of coarse paper roughly printed with picture and verses in smeared black.

Presently he set down the wine and took up the paper delicately in his fine, capable fingers. It contained a hideous caricature of himself in the likeness of a hen seated on a nest of eggs, each of which was labelled with the name of one of the new dioceses; the shells of several were already broken, and newly fledged bishops were hopping out of them.

Granvelle was well used to such jests; the Netherlanders were famous for their pasquils, their pamphlets, their medals, and their rhetoric plays, and Granvelle had been the butt of all in turn; not even the terrors of the dreaded Inquisition itself could restrain the sharp and lively wits of the people from ridiculing their enemy.

Often enough they hit him on the raw, sometimes too they went wide of the mark, as in the coarse pasquil he held now; for, despite the general opinion to the contrary, the Cardinal was not responsible for the creation of the new bishoprics. He remained leaning back on his silk cushions gazing musingly at the caricature; the sense of some one approaching caused him to look up. Even his perfect control could scarcely repress a start; the Prince of Orange was coming across the grass. William made his salutation with smiling apology for his intrusion. The Cardinal dismissed the half-doubtful secretary, who was behind the Prince, and motioned his guest to the seat opposite his own.

"I come without permission," said William, smiling, "but I felt a great desire for a little speech with Your Eminence."

Granvelle's sumptuously liveried attendants were bringing the Prince cushions, a footstool, and setting before him wine, cakes, and fruit.

Granvelle, with a laugh, flicked the pasquil on to the marble table.

"The people become extraordinarily daring," he remarked, accepting the Prince's presence as if it was the usual thing for him to behold his arch-enemy at his table. "There is a general defiance, a lawlessness abroad, very displeasing to the servants of His Majesty."

William leant back in his chair; he was still smiling; his graceful, youthful figure, his small handsome head, his rich attire of black velvet with rose-coloured points—all gave him the appearance of the useless grandee many believed him to be. But Granvelle was not so deceived; he knew that the young cavalier smiling at him was as astute, as experienced, as able, as wise, as prudent as himself, and that he was the most dangerous of the many dangerous men in the Netherlands.

"There is much abroad displeasing to the servants of His Majesty," he answered. "I think there are perilous times ahead."

"If the grandees persist in what is near disloyalty, yes," admitted Granvelle, and he too smiled.

"Disloyalty?" said William lightly, and raising his fine brows. "It is a matter of terms. Our remonstrances have been given to the Regent out of regard to our loyalty."

"I know something of your regards, Highness," replied the Cardinal, thinking of the information he had received that morning.

William instantly took his meaning.

"Had we not wished Your Eminence to know of our proceedings, we should scarcely have disclosed them to Baron Barlaymont."

The Cardinal's fine face hardened; he set down the peach he was handling, and took his chin in his fingers. In the young grandee's manner was a hint of that insolence the Burgundian priest had had to endure from the lesser nobles like Brederode and De la Marck—the insolence of the great towards the upstart who had been born a commoner.

"Your Eminence," continued William delicately, "would be wise to retire from the Netherlands."

"You came to tell me that?" asked Granvelle, almost surprised into anger.

"The Netherlands will not endure the measures of Your Eminence."

"Then they are rebels against the King's authority," replied the Cardinal proudly, "for I do nothing of myself, but all as the instrument of Madrid; and now we are speaking with this boldness, I tell you, in the name of King Philip, to warn your friends Montigny and Berghen to be more obedient to the commands of the Inquisition in their provinces."

William looked at the Cardinal.

"The King promised not to introduce the Inquisition," he said.

"I am not the keeper of the King's conscience," replied the Cardinal adroitly, "but I can bear witness that His Majesty is introducing nothing—the Inquisition was in the Netherlands in the Emperor's time."

"But it was never enforced," replied the Prince, "and in many provinces unknown, so that there are whole villages, nay, townships, of those of the Reformed Faith."

"What is the Reformed Faith or the Netherlands to you?" asked Granvelle keenly—"you, a ProvenÇal prince, a German count, a Spanish grandee, a Catholic?"

"As to that," replied the Prince lightly, "I am Stadtholder of some Netherland provinces, and one of the advisers to the Regent, therefore I think I do well to protest against measures which I foresee bringing ruin on His Majesty's dominions—and I do not believe in punishing people for their private faith."

"That sentiment would be a dangerous one were you a common man," returned the Cardinal.

"I know," smiled William, "and it is against such things that I protest."

"Tolerance for heretics is only to be expected from a Prince united so closely to them."

"Perhaps," said William indifferently; "but I was not talking of my tolerance, but of Your Eminence's policy."

"That is known, clear, and will not be altered," said Granvelle; he raised his glass and slowly sipped his wine.

William leant forward across the marble table set with the mingled luxuries of crystal and silver, and fixed his dark eyes on the churchman's serene face.

"Cardinal Granvelle," he said earnestly, "do you mean to force the Inquisition on the Netherlands?"

"I mean," answered Granvelle, with his habitual evasion, "to fulfil to the letter the commands of His Majesty."

"Whatever they may be?"

"Most certainly—yes."

"Even if the King enforces the Emperor's edicts against heresy?"

"He will not do so until he knows the findings of the Council of Trent."

"But if those are in favour of greater severity against the heretics, and the King endorses them," persisted the Prince, "will you be the instrument to obey His Majesty?"

"I think that Your Highness knows well enough that I shall be that instrument," replied the Cardinal haughtily.

William of Orange drew back; his expression changed to a look of decision that was almost hard, and this unusual sternness of his dark features so altered him that he seemed a different person. For a second Granvelle glimpsed the man behind the mask of the courtier.

"To do what you speak of doing," said William, "is to ruin the Netherlands. The civil officers will not obey, the population will not submit, you will break commerce and industry—you will provoke a revolution."

"I do not fear that," replied Granvelle; "the Stadtholders are not all like Berghen and Montigny——"

"Nor all like Barlaymont. Do you think such a man as he could do anything?" flashed William.

"I am not afraid," smiled the Cardinal, showing to the full that gentle contempt for his adversaries that they had always found so galling. "As for the grandees——"

"As for the grandees," interrupted the Prince steadily, "we are no longer boys or idle courtiers, as perhaps Your Eminence imagines us, but men, able to play a man's game."

Granvelle's smile deepened.

"I never underrated the abilities of Your Highness," he said, "but you perhaps overrate your own power; and for the people——"

"The people! It is they will decide the final issue. They are not slaves, Your Eminence, nor a conquered race, but His Majesty's subjects through inheritance; nor is he an absolute King here, as in Spain, but merely Count and Lord, and bound by oath to protect the people's charters as they to obey him. Look back a little—did not Maximilian do penance in the square of Bruges, and Mary go on her knees to her own councillors? These Netherlanders are easily pressed too far."

"Your Highness threatens revolt?"

"I threaten nothing. I prophesy."

The Cardinal tossed down his lace napkin.

"Even if there were a revolt," he said quietly, "it might be crushed."

"It might be supported," replied William.

"By the House of Nassau?" asked Granvelle.

William laughed in the priest's face.

"I am Catholic, and His Majesty's subject," he replied, "but there are certain neighbours who are neither who might easily be induced to foment discontent in the Netherlands."

"Notably the relatives of Your Highness's wife?" insinuated the Cardinal.

"Nay, they are peaceful in Saxony," said the Prince serenely. "I was thinking of the Elector Palatine."

Granvelle made a dignified movement with his hand as if he swept aside all the other's arguments.

"His Majesty is not to be frightened by either rebellious people, jealous nobles, nor the heretic Princes of Germany from proceeding in his duty to God and his subjects. Nay, I am so persuaded of the fervency of the King for the Holy Church that I believe he could sacrifice the Netherlands, and every soul within them, sooner than allow them to become the breeding-ground of heresy."

"And in this you would support him?" asked William gravely.

"With all my power," replied the Cardinal, "and at peril of my life."

"You are a poor politician then," said the Prince.

"I am a good churchman," returned Granvelle calmly, "and that is all I ever made pretence to be."

"So His Majesty, you think, would sooner ruin the Netherlands than suffer them to become heretical?" remarked the Prince.

"I do believe it, and in that resolve the Duke of Alva does support him—and myself."

William rose.

"Then we who have estates in this country must look to them, lest we be ruined too," he said, with a little smile.

"Your Highness will pursue one way, I another," replied the Cardinal, rising also.

"And both of us will be serving His Majesty," remarked William gravely.

The Cardinal gave him a sidelong look, but the Prince's face was impassive.

"That His Majesty must decide," was the priest's answer. Ever courteous, he now conducted his guest to the gate where his horse and squire waited.

They passed the famous statue inscribed "Durate," a woman with an empty wine-glass in one hand and a full glass of water in the other, by which the Cardinal sought to symbolize the resistance of his own calm fortitude and temperance as opposed to the extravagance and worldliness of his enemies.

He called the Prince's attention to this figure.

"'Durate,' my motto," he remarked, with a meaning smile.

"A brave word," replied William. "I too have a high, aspiring motto." He looked straightly at the priest. "Ce sera Nassau, moi, je maintainerai." With that he mounted and rode back to Brussels, while Granvelle returned thoughtfully across his smooth lawns to his marble table under the chestnut tree. There, leaning back in the pleasant shade, he threw crumbs of bread to the peacocks that came strutting across the grass at his call.

The months passed with terrible monotony for RÉnÈe le Meung and perhaps for all at the Court of Brussels; the long and bitter struggle between the grandees and the Cardinal filled the air with intrigue and dissension; the Regent began to hesitate in her allegiance to Granvelle, and hung miserably undecided between the two parties; Montigny had been sent to Madrid to remonstrate with Philip, but without avail; a second letter of protest was sent, equally fruitless; the Cardinal, serene as always, triumphed quietly over his enemies and continued to be the predominant influence in the Councils of Margaret; heretics continued to be seized and slaughtered wherever the civil authorities could be induced to support the Inquisitors, and the raging discontent of the people was repressed with a heavy hand.

In the sumptuous household of William of Orange life went with the old magnificence but not with the old joyousness; politically it was the rallying-point of the grandees, who had now refused to sit in the councils with the Cardinal, and met in William's gorgeous saloons to discuss their plans; it was also the headquarters of the Prince's brothers, sisters, and brothers-in-law. During the year after his marriage, too, his German relatives visited him there, causing great offence to the Cardinalists; but all these comings and goings, all these intrigues, meetings, entertainments, were clouded by two things: the growing embarrassment of the Prince's finances, and the element of bitter discord provided by Anne of Saxony.

Whatever the festivities or excitements might be, RÉnÈe saw none of them; she was for ever closeted with her mistress, who, now the Prince's quarrel with Granvelle made her appearance at Court impossible, sulked week after week in her rooms. She had taken a capricious liking to have RÉnÈe, and RÉnÈe only, with her; and the waiting-woman submitted to the slavery of her position with a curious dumb patience.

There was no distraction, no change, no interest in Anne's life. Her first child she had lost at birth, and this had further embittered her; her one time extravagant love for her husband, her pleasure in fine clothes and jewels, were completely dead; she never appeared but she created a disturbance with her temper; she refused to admit any of the court ladies into her intimacy, and so she remained closed within her rooms, a slattern, a shrew, a scold, and daily becoming worse; entirely indifferent to the great events taking place at her very gates, but keenly alive to any detail in which she might find excuse for complaint or fury.

RÉnÈe wondered why she stayed; the life was almost intolerable, and she had had two chances of escape since she came to Brussels: one of the Regent's secretaries had asked her in marriage, and the Countess of Egmont was willing to take her into her service.

But RÉnÈe had declined both, and remained in the great Nassau palace, tending her mistress with tireless devotion and eagerly watching what news she could of the movement of the events in which she perceived the Prince of Orange was the leader; she was like one waiting—but for what she did not know. It was in the winter after the grandees had dispatched their second letter to Philip, and when affairs seemed to be reaching a crisis in the Netherlands, that matters in the Nassau household reached a climax of discord.

Anne had taken a whim to have the Prince's children by his first marriage under her care, and had been fiercely angered by William's decision to place his little girl in the household of the Regent, and to keep the boy in Louvain. As a result of this Anne kept her room for nearly a week; but the day came when the Prince, entertaining his friends at one of his lavish dinners, demanded her presence as necessary.

It was, as usual, RÉnÈe's task, first to persuade her mistress to appear, and secondly to make her fit to take the head of the Prince's table, and, as the short afternoon began to fail, RÉnÈe went in search of her; she found Anne in her bedchamber hunched up against the white porcelain stove; she was eating sweets.

RÉnÈe, whose natural instincts were towards the beautiful, the refined, even the voluptuous, never came into her mistress's presence without a sense of absolute repulsion.

Anne, though still under twenty, was now as careless in her dress and person as any hag of ninety; increased ill-health had deadened her always dull complexion, her eyes were swollen beneath, her mouth loose and ragged; her colourless hair was gathered untidily in her neck, her twisted figure further bent.

To-day she wore a bedgown of stained dark blue velvet, trodden-over slippers, and a soiled linen cap; yet she cost the Prince more in clothes than ever the charming and elegant Anne of Egmont had done.

Though it was not yet dark, the windows were tightly closed and curtained, and candles flared and guttered untidily on the various tables. The Princess had sat all day in this artificial light, and the atmosphere of the chamber was thick and close. As RÉnÈe entered Anne looked up.

"You were out yesterday," she said, breaking the utter silence she had preserved for two days.

"Yes, Highness, it was my hour."

"Where did you go?"

"About the town, as always."

"I saw you in the Gardens with Count Louis," sneered Anne.

"I met him," replied RÉnÈe, unmoved. "We spoke together for, I think, two minutes."

"Why were you so late?"

"There was a rhetoric play, Highness, and I was hindered by the crowd."

"What is a rhetoric play?"

"A morality, Highness," replied RÉnÈe patiently, "that the poor oppressed heretics make to expose their wrongs and strike at their tyrants."

"Ah, plays that make a jest of monks and nuns and all those in authority!"

"It is a grave jest," said RÉnÈe. "They do it at peril of their lives."

"Are they not often apprehended?" asked Anne spitefully.

"Very often, Highness, and then they are strangled or burnt or tortured, or hacked to death with a rusty sword, as a poor schoolmaster was the other day for reading the Bible to his wife. And it was in her presence they slew him, and she died of it," added RÉnÈe quietly.

"And they still persist?"

"Ay, they still persist," repeated RÉnÈe.

"I wish you would keep away from them," said the Princess. "Do you want to involve me in this unruliness?"

RÉnÈe smiled.

"There is no fear of that," she replied; "and if they are bold enough to perform, I am bold enough to be of the audience, Highness."

"Do not come to me, if you are taken," said Anne.

"I shall come to no one. I am not afraid to die as the others do, when the time comes," replied RÉnÈe, laying out and making ready Anne's garments for the evening.

"What do you mean by 'when the time comes'?" demanded Anne.

RÉnÈe very faintly blushed.

"I mean that perhaps there may be some use for me—something for me to do." She changed the subject by adding: "And now it is time that Your Highness made ready for the supper."

"Why should I go at his bidding?" cried Anne stormily. "Why does he ask me to come? Merely to slight me before these others, these rebellious Netherlanders he gathers about him. God, what a life!" Her eyes sparkled wildly, she clasped her hands on her knees and rocked herself to and fro. "I had better have stayed in Saxony. I was better treated there, more taken notice of—here I am nothing in my own household! What does he care? He spends his time with other women, I will warrant."

"His Highness spends his time in affairs, Madame, and laborious business, and gives all his leisure to you," said RÉnÈe.

"Affairs, business!" sneered Anne. "What do you know of it? He will not attend Court because of this foolish quarrel with the Cardinal; and as for his own matters, if he attended to them he would not be in the confusion and debt he is, with mortgages and money from the Jews. Where does his fortune go?" she added, working herself up. "I was a well-dowered maiden, but what I brought him was like water thrown down a well. What have I seen of it? His idle brothers and his mincing sisters bleed him, I will swear."

Her glance fell on the dress RÉnÈe had put out, and her mood changed.

"Perhaps he is hoping that I shall not come down and that he can roister alone with his worthless friends, but I will disappoint him."

This idea seemed to give her pleasure, and she suffered two of her tire-women to array her in a gold and scarlet brocade she was fond of, a wide ruff of Mechlin lace, and a violet mantle with silver tissue. As she sat with an unusual patience under the hands of the little German girl who was crimping her hair with hot irons, she asked the reason of all the grey camlet liveries she had observed from her window.

"I note that many of the great lords' men wear them," she added.

"Oh, Madame," said the little maid, Katrine, glad that her mistress was so quiet, "it is because of a dinner given the other day by the Seigneur de Groblendonck, where the talk fell on the extravagance of the Cardinal, and the great splendour of his liveries; and it was agreed, to spite him, that the grandees' men should all wear a plain livery, grey camlet, as Your Highness saw it."

"A pack of fools!" said Anne. "And was there no protest?"

"They say the first device on the sleeve was changed from a Cardinal's hat to a bundle of arrows, at the Regent's request; and she would have stopped the liveries, but there were too many ordered and cut. It was the Count of Egmont who thought of the design."

"He is a big fool," said Anne shrewdly. "Does he think the King will ever forgive that? Who else was at this dinner?"

"The Seigneur Montigny and Seigneur Berghen and others, Highness."

"Silly child's jests!" cried the Princess. "Where did you hear all this?"

"Oh, Madame, one cannot stir without hearing it; the town is full of the talk of it. If Your Highness had not been indisposed," she added tactfully, "you too would have heard of this dinner and the liveries."

Anne turned to RÉnÈe.

"Why did you not tell me of this?" she demanded. "It is much more interesting than your rhetoric plays."

"The rhetoric play! I saw that!" cried little Katrine. "I was with RÉnÈe—it was so amusing. There was a fellow with chalk on his face made up like the Cardinal—and some one called out to arrest him; but the people only laughed, and when one of the town guard came up there was the Seigneur Brederode standing by the stage with his sword half out and offering to spit anyone who touched the players. And the guard made off, buffeted by the crowd, who cheered my Lord Brederode finely——"

"You talk too much," said Anne crossly, "and you have done my hair ill."

She rose, fiercely pushing away the combs and brushes that cumbered her dressing-table, and limped to the door, a tragic enough figure in her ravaged and useless youth.

It was RÉnÈe's duty to attend her to the dining-room, for it pleased Anne to have a lady behind her chair as if she was an Empress, and many and many a weary hour had the waiting-woman spent observing the sulks, violences, and rudenesses of Anne, and the unfailing gentleness of the Prince—a gentleness which, however, was becoming rather stern of late.

To-night Anne received her guests with passable civility. The brilliant saloon, the splendid dresses, the music, the honour paid her, seemed to raise her spirits; but the effect was only temporary. Half-way through the meal she fell into sullenness; she clouted the ears of the page who brought her napkin, and then, because he spilt some drops of water on her gown, she screamed out for the music to cease, saying the sound of it was tearing her head in two; she abused the cooking, then sank into silence, emptying glass after glass of wine.

RÉnÈe had noticed that the Princess drank far too much of late; with the excuse of her headaches she always had wine in her apartments, and the quantity of this she consumed had considerably increased.

And to-night the Prince observed it for himself; for he moved his wife's glass away, and the steward, understanding, brought no more wine to Her Highness. Anne noticed this, and her eyes flamed with rage; she dragged nervously at the tablecloth and pulled at her mouth. RÉnÈe shuddered; she was somehow desperately desirous that Anne should not shame the Prince.

But the waiting-woman was powerless; she could only stand there silent, a mere unnoticed spectator. It was a brilliant company: Egmont was there with his wife, Hoorne, Mansfeld, Montigny, Berghen, Brederode, and other of the grandees and lesser nobles and their wives now all openly banded against the Cardinal.

Most of the talk turned on the famous new liveries, and Egmont described how he won the toss which was to decide the design, and how eagerly his livery had been accepted.

At this point Anne lifted her smouldering eyes and turned to her husband.

"Will our men appear in this beggarly camlet?" she asked, and her tone was a direct insult to Egmont and his fellows.

"Why not?" smiled William. "It will be an easy means of economy, ma mie."

"Economy!" repeated Anne scornfully. "That is a strange point on which to begin economy; and is it not rather late, too, now when your affairs stand almost past helping?"

"Her Highness speaks like a Cardinalist," smiled the Countess of Egmont, in the hope of distracting Anne from her temper. "Yet she must have little love for the persecutor of the Protestants."

Anne leant forward, put her arm on the table, and stared rudely at the Countess across the gold and silver, china and porcelain of her own luxurious table.

"I did not come to Brussels, Madame," she said, "to bicker with the Cardinal and flout His Majesty, nay, nor to live cooped away like a sick pigeon within four walls——"

"Anne!" said the Prince, turning in his chair. "Hush, Anne."

The Princess faced him with sudden frenzy.

"I may speak at my own table! I may say what I wish! Do you think that I am Griselda in the silly tale to suck my thumb patiently while you do what you please! By the living God, I would that I was back in Saxony! But little you care——"

"Anne!" cried William. "Oh, Anne!"

"'Anne, Anne,'" she mocked him. "How long is Anne to endure it?"

The Countess of Egmont rose in her place and beckoned to RÉnÈe.

"Her Highness is ill," she said quickly. "It is a shame to expose her."

The Prince caught at the words.

"Yes, you are ill—let them see you to your chamber."

"I am not ill!" cried Anne, with a look of hate at the Countess, "but heart-sick with the treatment I get."

She rose too, glittering in her brocades and dragging the cloth awry.

"So I am to be sent from my own table," her railing continued. She swayed on her feet and burst into hysteric tears; the Prince caught her arm; she turned and struck him feebly with her other hand.

Count Louis rose and clapped his hands, and the musicians began to play, while RÉnÈe and the Prince led Anne from the dining-hall.

As they reached her room the little German girl came running to meet them with a frightened face.

"What is the matter with her?" demanded William sternly, as the sobbing, protesting Princess collapsed, a shaken heap, on a chair.

"She is ill," said RÉnÈe. She could not bear to look at him, so pale he was, so suddenly grave and sad, all look of youth gone from him. RÉnÈe felt personally shamed.

"A strange illness," he replied. "I can but hope that she will improve as she becomes older."

He was turning away when Katrine broke out—

"Your Highness—it is the wine. To-night when I was arranging the room I found these,"—she pointed to a dismal row of empty flasks on a side table,—"and the steward told me he brought them to Madame—and pounds of sugar. It is the wine which makes Her Highness ill."

RÉnÈe shuddered at the girl's boldness in thus unveiling what the waiting-woman had concealed even from herself; but perhaps, she thought desperately, it was as well that the Prince should know.

"Is that it?" exclaimed the Prince; he flushed, and his voice was full of an extraordinary bitterness. He turned and looked at the intoxicated girl in her disarrayed splendour and her imbecile tears. RÉnÈe knew as well as if he spoke that he was thinking how dear he had paid for this wedding, which he had so long striven for, and so triumphantly achieved.

Anne struggled up, supporting herself on the arm of the chair.

"I wish you had left me in Saxony," she sobbed foolishly. "What life is this for me?"

"It is not over-sweet for me, Madame," replied the Prince. "But do not think that you can trouble me further. I now know your worth, and can dismiss you from my mind."

She was frightened, half-sobered, for never before had he spoken so coldly to her, and the finality of his tone struck even her dazed brain, and she dimly realized that she had lost him.

"This comes of all these miserable quarrels," she muttered confusedly—"your livery—your rhetoric play——"

"There is no need for a rhetoric play wherewith to mock me," interrupted William. "Your Highness plays a sorrier morality here than any mouthed in the streets."

He left her; he went back to his guests. RÉnÈe and Katrine, helped by another frightened woman, got the Princess to bed.

They then sat down, drearily enough, to their supper, and conversed in whispers of Egmont's livery, their mistress, the rhetoric play, and the things, big and small, which went to make their life.

That winter the Count Adolphus, who had been seeing service with the King of Denmark, joined the Nassau household at Brussels, where Count Louis was already living; he too hoped for some post under his brilliant brother, and meanwhile eagerly joined the party of the grandees and closely associated himself with the band of young and reckless cavaliers, such as Count Louis, Count Hoogstraaten, young Mansfeld, and Henry Brederode.

It was a gorgeous life, an extravagant life, a life in every way reckless and opulent that these seigneurs led on the edge of revolution, on the edge of the King's wrath, on the edge perhaps of worse things than any of them dreamed.

There were hunts, falcon parties, entertainments at their magnificent country seats, balls, feasts, dinners, masks in the great palaces in Brussels; even the Cardinalists Aremberg, Aerschot, and Barlaymont mingled in this joyous and spendthrift society. But it was the party headed by Orange, Egmont, and Hoorne which went the furthest in splendour, display, and open defiance of the Cardinal and the edicts of the Inquisition—edicts which two Stadtholders at least, Berghen and Montigny, resolutely refused to enforce in their provinces.

Granvelle smiled and wrote his long dispatches to the King, carefully giving instances of the pride and insolence of the grandees, and declaring that not only were they set against himself, but against the authority of His Majesty. Margaret raged and wept and grew daily more confused; all had forsaken her council board save the Cardinal and his creatures, and her pride began to revolt against Granvelle's obvious treatment of her as a puppet. Her secretary Armenteros, one of the sly Spaniards bred in the school of Madrid, urged her to assert herself, and she could not but see that Granvelle's policy, however acceptable to the King, was most likely to raise a religious war in the Netherlands, which she, a foreigner in fact, though nominally a Fleming, dared not attempt to coerce without the aid of the Stadtholders with their immense local influence.

Early in the new year it became secretly known to the grandees that Margaret had lately sent a letter to the King representing the desperate financial state of the country, the firm hold heresy had, the immense feeling against the Inquisition, the impossibility of counting on the nobility while Granvelle remained in power, and the advisability of recalling the Cardinal for a while.

This news was received as a triumph, and Egmont, with his usual recklessness, gave a great feast, where the toast "to the departure of the man in red" was enthusiastically drunk.

It was past midnight when a party of young nobles—Adolphus of Nassau, Hoogstraaten, Montigny, and Brederode—left Egmont's mansion and turned homewards through the moonlit streets of Brussels.

They would not so soon have left the festival if they had not been inspired by a project of daring mischief: Brederode had a sheaf of violent pasquils under his brocade cloak, Hoogstraaten in the same manner concealed a pot of paste, and Adolphus and Montigny were to keep watch while the other two placarded their insults over any bare wall that offered.

It was a fair night, and the moonlight fell unclouded into the streets, casting sharp shadows from gables and balconies and rendering the work of the young cavaliers as dangerous as they could wish; even Egmont had warned them against proceeding too far, and William had perpetually forbidden his brothers to indulge in dangerous jests, for William knew Philip.

But they were young, enthusiastic, warmed with wine, absolutely fearless—and where Henry Brederode was there could never be caution.

This nobleman was not wealthy, but of as ancient a descent as any in the Netherlands, being the last representative of the former Counts of Holland, of whose vast possessions, however, he retained only one lordship.

As he stood now leaning against a church door on which he was engaged in pasting his pasquil, it was easy to see the fascination which kept him the friends of men who believed him worthless, for there was a winning charm in the handsome laughing face, the thick curls shading the bold impudent eyes, the humorous mouth, showing the man of ready wit, of endless daring, of quick temper, and ready good nature. He was dressed, altogether beyond his means, in purple and gold brocade; his ruff of Flanders lace was stained with wine, and in the gold silk twist of his left garter he carried a dagger.

Near him stood Anthony Lalaing, Count Hoogstraaten, a chosen friend of the Prince of Orange despite his youth; he was short and very slender, and looked almost like a page as he offered the paste pot, his dark mantle wrapped from his eyes to his knees, his hat pulled over his brow, the only part of his festival attire visible being his rose-coloured silk hose.

Adolphus of Nassau also muffled himself in his cloak, and Floris de Montmorency, the Seigneur de Montigny, a dark splendid cavalier, kept watch at the turn of the street.

The yellow lights of the two oil lamps, flickering before a gaudy shrine to the Virgin set in the angle of the houses opposite the church, showed that the streets were empty, and that no one spied from the windows, alike all dark and shuttered. But as Brederode, with a laugh of enjoyment, was pasting a crude but effective likeness of the Cardinal rapidly journeying to hell in the company of the Devil next to the lampoon which he had already firmly affixed to the church door, Hoogstraaten and Montigny both gave a sound of warning—but too late; a carriage, singularly light and noiseless, swept round the corner, and the nobles, whose own reckless laughter had concealed the sound of the wheels, found the vehicle on them before they could fly.

One of them, at least, did not wish to do so; Brederode turned round, the paste-brush in his hand, ready for any defiance.

The other three crowded close to the door, hiding with their persons the distinct white squares of the still wet lampoons.

"What carriage in these streets at this hour?" whispered Montigny, who, as the most prudent, was also the most nervous and anxious.

His curiosity was not long in being satisfied, the blinds of the carriage were up, and from the window nearest the church looked out the serene smooth face of Cardinal Granvelle.

Even Brederode concealed the paste-brush, and the others lowered their faces into the folds of their mantles.

But the carriage stopped, and Granvelle looked straight at Brederode.

"Good evening," he said. "You enjoy the night air of Brussels?"

"As well on foot as Your Eminence in a carriage," replied the Baron, throwing back his head, his eyes beginning to dance with defiance.

"Oh, I," replied Granvelle, his glance travelling over the other cavaliers—"I am returning to La Fontaine after supper with the Regent."

"I also am returning home," replied Brederode. "My host was the Count Egmont."

"Did the Count win any more dice throws?" asked the Cardinal.

"Nay, we were not occupied in gaming," said Brederode; "but had we played," he added, with his reckless loyalty to Egmont, "I doubt not the Count would have won."

"Ah, he has luck," smiled the Cardinal, "but he may find the throw of the dice that made him the designer of the liveries a perilous victory."

The three cavaliers drew closer together; for all their high spirits and youthful bravado they knew what power the Cardinal had with Philip, and what the King's wrath meant. There might be eventual death for all of them if Granvelle saw what was pasted on the church door behind them.

But Brederode answered dauntlessly—

"Is there not some peril in Your Eminence driving abroad so late and unattended? Best be on your way; you are not so popular in Brussels."

Granvelle smiled.

"I am well aware that I have enemies capable of assassinating me, but I am able to despise them, even"—his glance again swept the silent three—"if these here are among those willing to lie in wait to do me a mischief."

"Whoever advised you so, lied!" cried Brederode.

The Cardinal leant farther from the window. "Who are those behind you?" he asked. "Methinks I know the figure of the Seigneur Hoogstraaten, or is it some page? And a member of the House of Nassau—would it be now—Adolphus or Louis?"

"Adolphus," answered that knight, who would not involve his brother in his adventure; "and by your leave we have as good right to be abroad as yourself."

"An amorous adventure?" smiled Granvelle. "Yet a church door is a strange rendezvous."

"Your Eminence knows best of that," said Brederode, with utter recklessness. "There are others beside you who know how to reconcile love and the Church."

Granvelle was well-known to be far from saintly, and the thrust caused him to wince. Adolphus caught Brederode's sleeve and besought him to hush.

"How many insolences go unchecked in the Netherlands!" said Granvelle softly. "But the King is not so easily mocked. Your names are all noted in Madrid."

"Go there and remind His Majesty of them," answered Brederode, "and place my name high on the list, and say I sent you there to write it."

Hoogstraaten pulled him back, and Montigny, disdaining to be disguised now his companions were discovered, moved forward, while Adolphus deftly set his back against the placard.

"Your Eminence will take no notice of the Count," he said, "since he is obviously far gone in wine."

"I take no notice of any of you," replied the Cardinal, "and I think you are more drunk with treason than with wine——"

"Treason?" shouted Brederode; "who dares give that word to me?"

And he was hurling himself on the Cardinal, but Hoogstraaten and Adolphus held him back and forced him against the wall; he laughed and broke loose from them, disappearing in the shadows behind the Cardinal's carriage.

"Ah, Floris Montmorency," cried the Cardinal, "is this the place for the Stadtholder of Hainault?"

"I but amuse myself with my companions," replied Montigny, with a smile, though he was deeply conscious of his false position.

"The nobles of the Netherlands choose dangerous amusements," said the Cardinal, "and the Princes of Nassau dangerous company," he added, glancing at Adolphus.

The three nobles, bitterly irritated at the Cardinal's questions and his delay, could hardly restrain their impatience, especially as they suspected that he knew well enough what they were about, and what they concealed behind them on the church door.

"You think I too dare something in reprimanding you?" said Granvelle, "yet I cannot believe that the chivalrous Houses of Nassau, Lalaing, and Montmorency would combine against a defenceless priest."

"Your Eminence need have no fear of that," replied Montigny, "though we are not among those who have found priests defenceless—nay, very much the opposite."

"The March air," replied Granvelle, "is too keen to give a relish to this banter of wits with boys and roysterers."

"We wish no conversation with Your Eminence," cried Adolphus angrily; "you might have driven on, for us, without a word."

"I am sorry," said the Cardinal, with a keen look at Montigny; "yea, I say again that I am sorry to see the Stadtholder of Hainault in such company."

With this remark, which Adolphus and Hoogstraaten received as an insult and Montigny as a threat, Granvelle signalled to the coachmen and leant back in his seat.

As the carriage drove on up the slope, Montigny looked anxiously for Brederode.

"Where is he? Fled?" Adolphus asked.

But a shout of laughter answered them; the Count was standing at the corner under the shrine and pointing after the Cardinal's carriage.

When the other three cavaliers looked in this direction they could not forbear laughter either. On the back of the carriage in which Granvelle was taking his stately departure was pasted the lampoon and the picture of His Eminence hastening along with the Devil.

While the others had been using their wits, Brederode had used his paste-brush, and to greater effect.

"Par le Cordieu!" cried the Count, "his face will turn yellow when he sees that!"

"But he will guess who did it, my Brederode," said Hoogstraaten, "and what kind of exploit will that show in us?"

"Give me the bills," added Montigny, "here is enough for one night."

Hoogstraaten cast his paste pot over the wall of the garden nearest, and Adolphus was glad to end the perilous jest; the night air, the conversation with the Cardinal, had cleared their minds of the fumes of wine and excitement. It had been a dangerous moment while they stood with their backs against the placards on the church door.

"The news of this may reach Madrid," continued Montigny, endeavouring to disarm Brederode of his brush.

"Madrid is a great way off," returned the turbulent Count.

"But Philip has a long arm," said Montigny; he took the rest of the pasquils from Brederode and thrust them into his own doublet, and cast the brush over the wall after the paste pot.

Brederode was inclined to be angry, till two of them passed an arm in his, and the four of them went up the street, the Count shouting a song loudly enough to bring the solitary watch to the street corner as they went by.

They had almost regained Egmont's palace, where Hoogstraaten and Montigny were lodging, when their progress was suddenly interrupted.

A man stepped from a doorway and stood right across the path of the four nobles. Their first thought was of violence, and all of them clapped their hands on their swords, but the fellow threw out his hands to show he was defenceless, and then they noticed that he wore the famous livery—the camlet robe with the hanging sleeves embroidered with the bunch of arrows.

"There is only one of you with his face uncovered," he said, in a low eager voice, "but he is the Seigneur Brederode——"

"At your service," said the Count; "whose fellow are you?"

"Alas, I am no one's fellow," was the reply; "this livery is but a disguise bought with my last ducats. Titelmann is after me."

"Are you a heretic?" asked Montigny.

"I am nothing at all, but I played the part of the Cardinal in the rhetoric play, and the bonnet maker where I lodged betrayed me to the Inquisition. But the boy of the house warned me, and I crept out and got this habit, and have been in the streets ever since, and if some great noble will not take me into his house, Titelmann will get me at the last."

"I like your humour," said Brederode instantly, "and all enemies of the Cardinal are friends of mine——"

Montigny checked him and turned to the stranger.

"Fellow," he demanded, "is this tale true, or but some ruse? Answer me truthfully. I am the Stadtholder of Hainault."

"Before God it is true," answered the other earnestly. "And I speak in dread of my life, and with no object but to gain protection. Ever since it has been dark I have been creeping from corner to corner, hoping to find some seigneur——"

"Friend," interrupted Brederode, "I could take you if my house was bigger and my debts less. But Egmont," he added, with his usual admiration of that nobleman, "Egmont will give you shelter—his house is as full of heretics as Geneva itself."

"Then I will hasten to throw myself on the protection of the noble Count," answered the other gratefully. But Montigny, fearing the recklessness both of Brederode and Egmont, was for seizing this stranger who might be anything that he did not say he was—even one of Granvelle's spies—when Adolphus said, "Surely I know his voice, his look——" he dropped the mantle from his face as he spoke, and gazed keenly at the other, who gave a quick exclamation.

"It is the Count Adolphus of Nassau! Then out of his princely goodness he can vouch for me." So saying, he thrust back the hood of his habit, revealing the smooth keen face, the agate brown eyes, of DuprÈs, the Elector Augustus's skryer.

"Yes, it is he," said Adolphus, "who predicted a bloody death for all of us. And now you are in fear of death yourself," he added, with a smile; "it is strange that one who can read the future cannot foretell his own perils."

"Alas, noble seigneur," replied DuprÈs, with his usual mingled impudence and reverence, "the angels became capricious and would not give me any more good advice, and I, growing restless, must needs leave a good master and go on my travels which have brought me here—and will lead me no further than the stake unless one of your princely Graces have pity on me. I have seen," he added, with a slight convulsive shudder, "men burning who have beheld angels in the flames and died happy, calling on Christ. But I have always been profane, and am more like to see devils and die blaspheming my God."

"We would deliver no one to death for such an offence as yours," replied Montigny. "And since the Count Adolphus knows you, he will take you to the household of His Highness, where you will be sheltered."

The skryer bent and impulsively kissed the young knight's hand.

"Can he converse with angels?" demanded the Count, who had kept silence so long with difficulty. "If so he may bring them for me——"

"Alas, my magic table is lost," replied DuprÈs, "and the impression of the mystic seals—they went down on board ship, off Havre."

"But you can tell my fortune?" persisted Brederode.

"You will find that in the bottom of a wine cup, may God forgive you!" cried Hoogstraaten, dragging him on.

"Yes, best go home before more befall us," said Montigny, and the four parted—Brederode and his two friends back to the mansion of Egmont; and Adolphus, with the skryer humbly behind him, to the Nassau palace.

The huge and lavish household of the Prince of Orange, which included counts and barons, easily afforded shelter to the poor skryer. William listened to his story, gave him a place among his people, and straightway forgot him.

But DuprÈs, after his late miserable adventures, was sufficiently happy to find himself under this gorgeous patronage; he had his room, his laboratory, his weekly wage, and by means of the devices he had learned from his late master, Vanderlinden, he earned many an odd ducat from the numberless people who came and went in the mansion of the Prince.

He gained, too, a considerable dole from Anne, who was overjoyed to see him again, and rejoiced at the diversion a visit to his laboratory afforded. He worked on her childish vanity with perfumes, soaps, lotions, cosmetics; and on her idle credulity, by foretelling the future by means of cards and mirrors; and with the ready wit and facile ability which were his stock in trade, he speedily became a favourite with the Princess, who was the only member of the household sufficiently idle to be able to afford him limitless time, patience, and encouragement; for Anne had no friends, and she was not interested in her second child who lived apart with nurses and maids.

While William was becoming more and more absorbed in the task of defeating Granvelle and the policies he stood for, Anne was becoming more and more addicted to her fortune telling, her magic experiments, her wine drinking, and her bouts of fury, which rendered it almost impossible to find any one to wait on her. Only RÉnÈe le Meung remained at her task, patient, impassive, serving her mistress with as much devotion as if she loved her, concealing her faults as much as possible, and doing all in her power to make Anne preserve a reputable appearance before her world. It was a thankless, bitter task, but RÉnÈe performed it with as complete a self-abnegation as any anchorite his daily round of prayers and penances.

Anne had drifted completely from her husband, the passionate affection she had once evinced for him never revived in one single moment of tenderness. His quarrel with Granvelle, which had closed the Regent's Court to her, his absorption in affairs in which she refused to take the slightest interest, and the neglect she fancied she had received from all in Brussels, had produced in Anne a bitter disappointment from which grew an equally bitter dislike of her husband whom she regarded as the author of these evils.

But William, eminently generous, peace-loving, and used to domestic gentleness and serenity, made more than one attempt to restore amity; Anne's character bewildered and confused him.

Soon after he had received the momentous news that Cardinal Granvelle had requested the Regent's permission to accompany his brother for a few days into Burgundy to visit their mother, and that Egmont's offer to go to Madrid and explain the affairs of the Provinces in person had been declined, and that the King's answer to the petitions of Orange, Egmont, and Hoorne to remove the Cardinal had been a dry and stiff note bidding the three once more take their places at the Regent's table, William summoned a meeting of all the grandees who had leagued with him against the Cardinal.

The Prince was serious that day; he was often serious lately; matters in the Netherlands became daily worse. The daily sight of the horrible executions of the Inquisition were driving the people to frenzy, the estates and cities were protesting against the abuse of their charters, and Margaret was helpless. She advised moderation, she promised moderation, but she did not enforce it, for Inquisitor Titelmann was daily in her antechamber, and she was as afraid of Peter Titelmann as she was afraid of Granvelle and of Philip.

So the Prince of Orange, looking about him, beheld confusion, tumult, mystery, danger, and blood; the sky was dark, the air heavy with menaces, and to his acute ear an even more deadly sound was discernible—the first low roll of drums beating up for war. The day of the gathering of the grandees, passing through a little cabinet on his way to the chamber where he was to meet them, he unexpectedly saw his wife, leaning on her side in the window-seat, arranging strange Eastern cards in fantastic patterns.

Behind her a glory of coloured glass cast blue and crimson and gold light over the smooth panelled-wood walls of the little room, over the bent figure of the Princess in her trailing, untidy gown of white and black Venetian velvet, and over the crudely coloured and grotesquely pictured faces of the cards she was arranging with such care.

On a stool near her, but out of the stream of light, sat RÉnÈe, her brown dress scarcely distinguishable from the panelling and the shadows, but her fair face, her vivid hair, brilliant above the plain linen of her small ruff.

William paused on seeing the two women. Anne glanced up and then down again without saying a word; RÉnÈe rose and curtsied. The Prince hesitated a moment, then crossed to his wife and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Ma mie," he said gently, "what occupation is this for you?"

"I am telling my fortune," returned Anne, "in the hope that the future may be fairer than the past; I am telling little Anne's fortune, in the hope it may be better than mine."

"Why in this public place?" asked the Prince.

Anne violently threw down the two cards she held and rose.

"Because I am tired of my rooms! I am tired of everything! Why do you interfere in my movements?"

William caught her small, hot, and feeble hand.

"If you would live more in accord with me I could make life sweeter for you," he said almost wistfully.

She stood sullenly, looking away.

"Listen, Anne," he continued, "it means much to any man who has difficult affairs on his shoulders to know his wife is bearing her part with patience and discretion——"

"Ah, now you are preaching, like my Uncles Augustus and William," cried the Princess fiercely, "and that, princely Highness, is what I would never endure."

She swept all the cards savagely from the window-seat to the floor and turned away; the Prince's anger was checked by the sight of the limp that marred her walk and impeded her haste to be gone from him.

RÉnÈe began picking up the cards; the light fell over her now, glorifying her opulent beauty that neither her plain dress nor her own cold indifference could eclipse.

"Where is the Princess going?" asked William.

"I think she will go to the workshop of her alchemist, as she calls DuprÈs, the Burgundian whom Your Highness is sheltering."

The Prince looked keenly at this fair woman who might have so easily been brilliant and who was so extraordinarily passive and so unnaturally patient; it was not the first time he had noticed her utter self-effacement.

"Child," he said kindly, "I fear your service is a dull one and your mistress difficult."

"I hope for nothing better, Your Highness," replied RÉnÈe quickly.

"You are very pretty to be so meek," smiled William.

The warm colour rushed to the waiting-woman's face; she stood looking down at the gathered cards in her hands.

"Her Highness keeps me out of charity," she said; "my father was slain as a heretic—we lost everything. I am quite friendless, and quite penniless, but for Her Highness."

"I am sorry," replied the Prince gently; "but do not speak of charity—and what you gain is hardly earned. I have marked that. What were your estates?"

She named them.

"They were confiscated by the Inquisition," she added.

William sighed, well knowing that such property was impossible of recovery.

"When you find your husband I will dower you," he said.

RÉnÈe lifted her face; he could not understand the look on it which almost startled him.

"I thank Your Highness," she said. "Shall I now attend the Princess?"

"Yes, keep with her," returned the Prince. He was turning away when he added, "Whom does she meet in this workshop?"

"Very few, Highness; sometimes there is there a certain Rubens, a lawyer, and his wife, who are friends of DuprÈs."

"That is not company for the Princess of Orange," said the Prince. He frowned, hesitated; then turned sharply away.

RÉnÈe stood still a moment, the rose colour glowing in her face, then went in search of Anne.

But the Princess was not in DuprÈs' laboratory; the waiting-woman found her in her room, sunk in the apathy that was the usual result of her fits of passion.

She sullenly bade RÉnÈe leave her alone, and that lady turned away, idleness and the whole afternoon before her. Katrine had already slipped out into the garden to meet some cavalier, the other women each had her own duty or her leisure; there was no company for RÉnÈe. She went out into the beautiful galleries, empty for once, and turned rapidly towards the hall where the Prince was to meet the grandees. It was one of the principal chambers of the mansion, and had a large musician's gallery from which RÉnÈe and the other waiting-women and pages often watched the balls, masques, and feasts going on below.

RÉnÈe now tried the little door leading to the private staircase of the gallery—it was unlocked; the meeting was no secret, and precautions against eavesdroppers had not been taken. With a heart strangely beating, RÉnÈe mounted the little dark stair and came softly out into the gallery which was shadowed and partly concealed by long crimson brocade curtains stitched and fringed with black.

Sheltered by the heavy folds, the waiting-woman peeped down into the hall glowing from the light of a great fire which flamed up the huge chimney, and sparkling from the winter sunlight pouring through the coloured glass of the high long windows.

On the walls hung tapestries of silk run with gleams of bullion: they represented the story of Medea and Jason.

Against the brilliant background were grouped all the grandees and nobles who were leagued against the Cardinal.

RÉnÈe's glance went eagerly from one to the other. There was Egmont in a camlet doublet with hanging sleeves embroidered with a bunch of arrows, in imitation of his famous livery; there was Hoorne, aloof, silent, gloomy, disliking his company only less than he disliked the Cardinal; there was Montigny, young Mansfeld, and Hoogstraaten, gorgeous young knights in brocade and silk; the two graceful younger Nassau Counts; the Marquis Berghen, heavy and corpulent; Brederode; the Seigneur de Glayon; Meghem, alert and warlike; and William of Orange, the man who was the acknowledged leader and centre of these Netherland Seigneurs and Stadtholders.

He was leaning over the high back of a gilt leather chair, talking earnestly of the instances of the atrocities of the Inquisitors which had come to his ears, and of the necessity for resisting them and their protector, Granvelle, to the utmost.

"Granvelle has asked for leave to go to Burgundy," he finished. "From secret information I believe he has asked for leave on Philip's advice, but, be that as it may, it must be our charge to see that once he has left the Netherlands he does not return."

He ceased speaking, but did not move from his easy yet thoughtful attitude while the groups about him broke into animated speech, while above all could be heard the voice of Brederode offering to wring Granvelle's neck if ever he should again set foot in the Netherlands once he had left them.

RÉnÈe gazed at William as he stood quietly observing the others, his dark face resting on his slim brown hand, a confusion of gold and crimson light falling over his slender figure; she noted the violet sheen of his Sicilian brocade, and the stiff points of the openwork double ruff which encircled his small well-shaped head.

RÉnÈe remembered how she had first seen him coming up the stairs of the town hall of Leipsic to greet his bride, and how, on the evening of his wedding day, she had looked down from a gallery on him, as she was looking now, and seen him move through the slow figures of the dance and sit beside Anne on the gold couch while the mummers brought them lilies and sweetmeats.

RÉnÈe had long since reversed her first judgment of the Prince. She no longer thought him an idle extravagant courtier, she had seen him proved brave, able, resolute; she knew that he set his face against the tyranny which put the Netherlands under the Inquisition, and now she heard him speak for liberty of conscience, for tolerance, for justice for the heretics—those poor creatures about whom great nobles usually concerned themselves not at all.

He cared, however; she had heard him speak in a moved voice of Titelmann's burnings and slayings; she had heard him dare to declare that these things should not be.

She found that she believed in him—strangely, intensely believed in him; it seemed to her that he was only half-revealed even to these men about him, that there was a part of him as yet known to no one, and that he had qualities which had never been guessed. She believed he would go further than he said, do more than he promised, be indeed a buckler and a shield, a light and a sword, to her country.

She drew completely back behind the curtains and put her shuddering hands before her face. She knew now why she had stayed with Anne, enduring everything; it was because of him, because she wanted to serve him, to hear of him, to be near him, because she thought he was the hero whom she had despaired to find, because she loved him.

Erect and motionless she stood, hearing his voice again as he spoke to his friends—the voice and tone of a self-reliant man, but one who eagerly wants sympathy, who almost wistfully asks for trust and belief. RÉnÈe had noticed before this gentleness of the strong nature, this affectionate friendliness of the astute wit, and they were to her eminently lovable traits, for by his gentleness she judged his strength—that greatest strength that is ever allied with sweetness.

As she stood there hidden, listening to his voice, the strangeness of life smote her almost intolerably. He was a great Prince who would never notice her save with that kindness of utter indifference which he would show to any of his servants; there was she, helpless to serve him, bound to eternal abnegation yet dedicated to him with her whole untouched heart and soul; and there was Anne, his wife, to whom he turned for companionship and sympathy, repulsing him fiercely, almost hating him, preferring the society of DuprÈs, the charlatan, or to drink herself stupid in her chamber rather than share any of his aims and cares.

And to keep her from utter degradation, to soften her furies, to coax her good humour, to excuse her, to put the best of her forward and conceal the worst, that was the only service RÉnÈe could render the Prince—a little thankless service, one that would be never rewarded, not even noticed in its true worth, yet she was glad to do it for this man who was standing for her country and her religion, this man whom she loved.

She heard the grandees leaving—their pleasant voices, the mingled footsteps, the opening and closing of the door.

When silence fell she looked again over the edge of the balcony.

The Prince was alone, seated by the fire, his head bent; by his side was a pretty little white hunting dog, and William's right hand absently caressed its long ears.

His face was in profile to RÉnÈe, and the firelight played over the fine lines of it, the low forehead, the straight nose, the firm mouth and chin, the compact head with the dark close hair; he was slightly frowning, and his brows were drawn over his eyes usually so wide open and vivacious.

In refinement, precision of outline, exactness of proportion, and expression both of elegance and force, he looked that perfect type, at once intellectual and athletic, which the ancients gave to their heroes—a type so removed from coarseness or grossness as to appear almost delicate, yet in reality strong with the supreme strength of a brain perfectly adjusted and a mind perfectly balanced and a body admirably made.

The twilight began to enter the sombre, magnificent chamber, and all the colours of glass windows, rich furniture, brilliant tapestry were blended into one deep glowing shadow, in the midst of which the dying ruby gleam of the fire brought out the figure of the Prince in his gorgeous brocades, his thoughtful face now serene as a fine mask, leaning back in his gilt chair and gazing in the flames, so wholly unconscious of that loving spectator who watched him so breathlessly from the gallery.

At last she moved away, quietly through the shadows, down the dark stairs and back to her duty. Anne was in her usual place by the stove, drinking sugared beer, and little Katrine was moving about the room sobbing under her breath with a great red mark on her face where her mistress had slapped her for being late.

RÉnÈe whispered to the girl to go away, and herself commenced the duties of putting in order all the Princess's disarranged things.

Anne began railing at her in a voice broken with tears; the waiting-woman hardly heard, for in her ears were the words she had just heard the Prince speak, and before her eyes the picture of him in the twilight, alone and thoughtful.

Cardinal Granvelle had asked and obtained leave to go to Burgundy to see his mother, whom he had not beheld for nineteen years.

That was now common knowledge, and a tumult of rejoicing broke forth which frightened the Regent almost more than the tumult of rage and hate which had preceded it.

For it seemed as if the people believed that with the departure of the Cardinal all their wrongs and miseries would end and the golden age begin; pamphlets, lampoons, caricatures, issued in hundreds from the secret printing presses, were scattered in the streets, pasted on the walls of the churches, and found their way even to Granvelle's cabinet and Margaret's antechamber; the rhetoric players became daily bolder and performed their satirical plays before huge audiences who forcibly protected the actors; heretic preachers addressed their followers even from the pulpits of churches from which the priests had been driven, and two of them, condemned to the flames by the Inquisition at Antwerp, were rescued, even after they had been chained to the stake, by the furious people, who carried them back in triumph to their lodgings.

And it was not only the people who thus recklessly displayed their joy at the departure of the hated minister. The victorious nobles, particularly Egmont and Brederode, openly exulted in the downfall of their enemy, for none of them believed that the object of his visit was more than an excuse, and it was generally thought that his journey to Burgundy was a mere pretext for retiring with dignity from a position he could no longer maintain.

Various rumours were abroad: some said the Cardinal had asked to be removed from the Netherlands, others that he was obeying secret orders from Philip and was furious at leaving the contest with the grandees, but whichever of their surmises might be correct it was certain that he was leaving and almost as sure that he would not return. Already a wit had pasted a notice "to be sold" over his villa "La Fontaine," and much laughter was provoked by the famous statue with "Durate" on the pedestal, which word had a mocking sound now.

But through all this hearty, intense, noisy rejoicing of the Netherlanders the Cardinal remained serene. Perhaps what gave him his calm was his knowledge of the other side of the picture; he knew Madrid, he knew Philip; he knew too how all this present rejoicing would be paid for some day, how Philip had marked and noted the names of these gay nobles who had driven out his minister, how all the reckless jests, pasquinades and speeches, the famous insolence of Egmont's livery, the disloyalty of Berghen and Montigny, were all known to Philip, and by him patiently and painstakingly noted down. Philip knew how to wait, but he had a memory no detail escaped.

Granvelle was not vindictive, and he was too politic to be inclement; he had no desire to be avenged on the men who had caused his downfall, and his last words to the Regent were to advise her to overlook the present disorders.

Indeed he disdained all his opponents save one only, the Prince of Orange.

He saw that without him the other nobles would be nothing; he was the guiding spirit of Egmont and Hoorne, neither of whom could have stood alone, and the first of whom, at least, would easily have been won by the Cardinal but for Orange.

"He is a dangerous man," said Granvelle with admiration, and loyally warned his master; then, with an unruffled spirit and a smile for all, set out on his journey to Burgundy.

Brussels seethed with excitement and joy; the members of the great trade guilds, the armourers, the cloth makers, the glovers, the gardeners, turned out in bands and paraded the streets; many of the shops closed while the servers and apprentices went out to see the Cardinal pass; parties of Protestants went about singing the hymns of Marot, and defying the law. It was a general holiday, and the only people angry and discomfited were the Cardinalists, Barlaymont, Aerschot, and Vigilius, who saw their power at an end; even the Regent was glad to see Granvelle go, for she hoped and imagined that the seigneurs would be easier to manage than the astute and able priest.

"Poor Madame Parma," remarked the Cardinal to his brother, the Seigneur de Chantonnay, who accompanied him in his carriage, "she cannot manage her charge at all. His Majesty should send a man to the Netherlands."

"The Duke of Alva for example," replied Chantonnay, who hated the Netherlanders.

"Alva is too severe," returned Granvelle; "these are people who will not bear too light a curb, too heavy a yoke. Alva has already recommended the taking off of the heads of Egmont and Hoorne."

"Why not?" said the other, who was vexed at his brother's fall and extremely irritated by the joyous and insolent farewells being given to the cavalcade as it passed towards the gates. "They are little better than rebels."

"Egmont is more useful to His Majesty alive than dead—better buy him than behead him."

"Is he to be bought?"

"Easily—poor, extravagant, vain——"

"But he is under the influence of Orange," said Chantonnay.

Granvelle smiled.

"There you have the crux of the situation, my friend," he replied. "The Prince of Orange. That is the man to strike, the others are boys and roysterers—but he knows how to use them. If it had not been for him I should not be leaving the Netherlands now."

"Why is he so disloyal?" asked Chantonnay peevishly.

"Ah, who knows what game he plays!" replied the Cardinal rather wearily. "He is serving neither King nor Church, so he must be serving himself—ambition!"

They had now nearly reached the gates of Caudenberg, and the Cardinal's escort, princely train and numerous equipages, were blocked for a moment by the narrowness of the streets and the pressure of the exulting crowds. Chantonnay was afraid of violence, even of assassination; there had been rumours of hired murderers lying in wait for the Cardinal, ready to take the first opportunity of attack; but Granvelle, who had driven alone and unarmed at night out to his country residence, was not to be frightened now, though the crowd might very well be dangerous.

He looked steadily and keenly out of the coach window at the faces of his enemies.

"They are sturdy people," he remarked, "who will give the King much trouble. And what truly grieves me is to see what little respect there is for holy things, one might say that there is no religion left in the land."

"Yet the great nobles have taken the Cardinal's Hat from the livery, I observe," said Chantonnay, "and put instead a bunch of arrows."

"The Duchess requested it," returned the Cardinal, who was still intently observing the crowd. "But what helps that? The Hat but meant insult to me and God's poor priests, whereas the arrows mean that they are banded together against the King, which is a declaration of rebellion no monarch should endure."

The carriage now moved on, and the Cardinal leant back in his seat; he had been looking to see if any of the nobles were among the crowd, for he wished to report very exactly the behaviour of these seigneurs to Philip. So far he had noticed none above the baser sort, but presently, as they neared the gate, he looked out again and up at the house near by where he knew Brederode had his lodgings.

And there at one of the windows was the Count together with the Count Hoogstraaten, the two of them laughing and throwing up their caps and clapping their hands in undisguised triumph and delight. This boyish exultation brought to Granvelle's cheek the angry flush the stately victory of William of Orange had failed to evoke; the brilliant minister, the skilful politician, the haughty priest tasted humiliation when he saw himself the butt of the malicious wits of these two young cavaliers.

He drew into the farthest corner of the carriage, but they had seen him, and, leaning out of the window, shouted their farewells with redoubled pleasure as the procession finally passed through the gates.

Then, with the common impulse not to let their defeated enemy escape too cheaply, they rushed down to the courtyard.

"I must see the last of the old fox!" cried Hoogstraaten, and he flung himself on his horse which stood waiting for him.

"I too!" laughed Brederode, "and as I am not booted I will come with you."

So saying he leapt on the Count's croup, and they dashed through street and gates in pursuit of the Cardinal's stately cortÉge, which was attended by a number of sumpter-mules, lent him by the Duchess.

The two knights on the one horse, Hoogstraaten in his buff and gold riding suit, his black velvet cap with the long heron's feather fastened by an emerald, his violet mantle; Brederode in the tawny damask satin, Flanders lace, scarlet points, and silk hose, in which he had danced nearly all through the night, were at once recognized by the crowd and cheered and applauded as heartily as the Cardinal had been hissed and execrated.

Brederode gaily waved the mantle he had snatched up as a pretence at a disguise, and laughed over the edge of his triple ruff which was something broken and something stained, and the couple plunged through the gates and out on to the road where the Cardinal was commencing his stately, if tedious, progress towards Namur, the first stage of the journey.

There were several others following the cavalcade, notably one of Egmont's gentlemen, and one who was in the employ of the Marquis Berghen, that nobleman whom the Cardinal disliked and feared next to the Prince of Orange.

But there was no representative of the House of Nassau dogging the retreat of His Eminence, and William would have been far from pleased had he known of the exploit of Hoogstraaten and Brederode.

For a while these two cavaliers kept a discreet distance from the Cardinal, and remained at the side of the road in the rear and near to the baggage mules.

But this did not long satisfy Brederode; he wished to ride by Granvelle's actual carriage, and to let him see who was escorting him on his journey.

And so, when the road fell into a little ravine, the two cavaliers rode along the edge of the height until they were beside the carriage and could look down on it, and when the way was level again they reappeared at the edge of the autumn forest, near enough to His Eminence's coach to look in at the window.

Granvelle's attention was attracted by Chantonnay to this spectacle of two men on one horse, and he looked out of the carriage.

Hoogstraaten had thrown his mantle over the lower part of his face, but Brederode's reckless face was uncovered save for the brown curls the March wind blew across his brow and cheeks (for he was hatless).

The Cardinal knew both instantly.

"They are buffoons," he remarked, but though he tried thus to dismiss the incident, it vexed him; however, the annoyance passed when he reflected how dearly the jesters were likely to pay for their jest.

The two cavaliers, regardless of the fact that the Cardinal had seen them and that therefore a full account of their exploit was certain to reach Philip, continued to follow the cavalcade in its slow progress over the rough, muddy winter roads until they reached a high piece of rising ground that commanded a full view of the surrounding country—bare woods, fields, hedges, disappearing into the cold blue mist of the distance.

Here they waited, and looking scornfully down on the Cardinal's coach as it passed, watched it lumbering along the road to Namur until a turn hid it from their eyes.

"At the first stage Granvelle will write of this to the Duchess," remarked Hoogstraaten, in a grave voice; his high spirits had left him, his prudence, though not his courage, was alarmed at what he had done.

But Brederode laughed; prudence was as unknown to him as fear; he had a far better claim than Philip to the Countship of all Holland, for his ancestry went unbrokenly back five hundred years to the ancient sovereigns of that province. In his heart he regarded the King as a usurper, and he had no respect either for him or his ministers; indeed, his furious loathing of Granvelle and his policies was based on his hatred of seeing his native land, where his forebears had ruled, in the hands of foreigners.

"Well, we have seen the last flick of the fox's tail," he said joyously, "and now we may go home to dinner, this keen air has given me an appetite."

Hoogstraaten turned the horse's head towards Brussels.

"Yes, the Cardinal has gone, but his disciples remain," he answered thoughtfully.

"The seigneurs will see to them," said Brederode confidently.

"Ah, I know not," remarked Hoogstraaten; "I believe Armenteros, the Regent's secretary, has more influence with her than Orange himself. But we shall see."

"Ay, we shall see, my Anthony," returned Brederode, "for my part I do not think so gloomily; if Armenteros behave as Granvelle has, then he may follow the same road—we have cast down a Cardinal, do you think we are to be baffled by a clerk?"

And he began to sing a cheerful song in a merry bass voice which rose very pleasantly over the still winter woodlands.

When they reached the Caudenberg gate they found the city still full of joyous emotion, and received as noisy a greeting as they had done on their departure.

Hoogstraaten would have dismounted at Brederode's lodgings, but that nobleman would by no means permit it, and they continued their progress through the city, exchanging joyful congratulations and greetings with those who were making a festival of Granvelle's departure.

As they made their way up the high streets which led to the ancient Brabant palace which was the Regent's residence, they were hailed by a half-laughing voice, and the Prince of Orange galloped alongside them.

"We have escorted His Eminence on the road to Namur!" cried Brederode.

"And though hungry and thirsty and cold," added Hoogstraaten, "we are now joining in the rejoicings of the good citizens."

"Ah, seigneurs," said William, with a little smile, "one day your pleasantries will end in a mischief, I fear."

"To our enemies, yes," replied Brederode. "Where is Your Highness going?"

"To wait on the Regent."

"So soon?"

"Ay, Margaret having flung away one prop must seize another; she is a weak woman and cannot stand alone," remarked Hoogstraaten.

"Shall we see you at supper to-night?" asked Brederode, as the Prince touched up his horse.

"Nay," smiled the Prince, "a wise man avoids your suppers, my Brederode, at least when he has business to perform."

"I have an excellent cook," pleaded the Count.

William, still smiling, shook his head and rode on towards the Brabant palace.

He went slowly, without parade or a single attendant, greeted affectionately and loyally by most of the people, for though some were doubtful of his attitude, the bulk believed that he would defend their liberties, and a great number even of the heretics had their hope in the great Catholic Prince who had already spoken against the Inquisition.

To-day, too, he was regarded by the people with added respect and interest, for it was clear that now the Cardinal had fallen, the Prince, as the principal member of the league that had brought about Granvelle's downfall, would be the greatest man in the Netherlands. Many wistful eyes were turned towards him as he rode, for many felt their fate was in his hands.

His deportment was not that of a man either triumphant or joyous; he was pale beneath the clear brown of his proper complexion, his eyes were guarded and thoughtful, and though he smiled with his usual pleasantness at those of his acquaintances he met, his manner was absent, and he seemed neither so gay nor so careless as he had done even a few days before.

When he reached the Brabant palace he met Egmont leaving the gates; the Count was flushed with pleasure at the reception the Regent had given him, and loud in his protestations of loyalty to Church and King; he was disposed to be frank and generous in his triumphs, and to heartily forgive all his enemies now the chief of them had been removed.

William regarded him affectionately, but said very little, and his air was still grave as he entered the palace.

Margaret received William warmly; she already spoke of the Cardinal with dislike and vexation, declared herself rejoiced to be rid of him, and showed every intention of flattering the men who had replaced him and his party and who must henceforth be supreme in her councils.

But the Prince was not captured by these compliments as Egmont had been; he had his agents at the Spanish Court, he knew something of the other side of the picture, and while Margaret was speaking he was looking at Armenteros, the arrogant Spanish secretary, who remained in the chamber. In this man, known to be deep in Philip's confidence and intimate with the Duchess, William beheld Granvelle's true successor.

At the same time he was perfectly well aware that Margaret knew his great influence, his unique position, and was sincerely desirous of attaching him to her; indeed, it was quite clear to the Prince that the Regent, despite her haughtiness, her pose of firmness, and independence, was sorely bewildered and confused how to manage her perilous wardship of the Netherlands, and eager enough for help and counsel.

But the Prince was not the man to sympathize with an arrogant woman unequal to her charge; he deemed a woman as out of place in government as a man at a spinning-wheel, though one who was queen by right and not by choice would have had his deep loyalty, but Margaret, however, was practically a foreigner, and lording in a place not her own, and neither the character of this woman who assumed such masculine qualities and was in reality so weak and futile, nor the rank of this Princess whose mother had been the daughter of a poor weaver of Oudenarde, could inspire any respect or admiration in the Prince.

He considered her as but a poor instrument of Philip's policy, and even while she was offering him the courtesies she thought so diplomatic, he was wondering how long she would hold her place.

Margaret on her side was uneasy; she could not read the Prince, she did not wholly trust him, yet she knew him to be necessary to her. With Egmont she had felt far safer; whatever his extravagances he was obviously loyal, obviously a good Catholic, and she was sure of the Prince on neither of these points; indeed, the painstaking Regent, sincerely eager to do her duty towards Philip and the Church, was secretly sorely puzzled how to deal with William.

She proceeded to endeavour to win, and if possible, deceive him by cajoleries and blandishments, as she had already won and deceived Egmont, for her politics were those of Machiavelli and Loyola.

"Now the Cardinal has gone," she said, "I can surround myself with my good friends whom he kept from me, and I hope all will go more smoothly and prosperously, both in my councils and the states, without this meddling priest."

William smiled into his ruff; by her abuse of Granvelle he could measure what she had said of him to the Cardinal, what she would, most likely, be writing to that minister within a few hours.

"There will be more prosperity for His Majesty's subjects and less anxiety for those who serve His Majesty, if His Eminence's counsels are reversed," he said.

Margaret regarded him with an anxiety she could not altogether conceal; her full bosom heaved beneath the gathered lawn and the Genoa velvet, and a quiver passed over her majestic face which she endeavoured to keep so regally impassive.

"It is to be supposed his policies are to be reversed, Highness," she answered, "since his enemies will take his place;" then remembering that the Cardinal's absence was supposed to be only a temporary one, "It may be some while before he returns to the Netherlands, and meanwhile we need not consult him," she added.

"Will he return at all?" smiled William, looking straightly at her. "I scarcely think so, Madame."

The Duchess, who had had Philip's secret instructions to allow the Cardinal to depart, and who knew that the visit to Burgundy was an elaborate ruse to disguise the downfall of the minister, was startled at the Prince's words. "How much does he know?" she thought, and her respect and awe of him increased.

"The Cardinal's return must be in His Majesty's good pleasure," she replied, smiling in her turn. "Meanwhile we have other things to think of. I have asked Your Highness here, to this private audience, because I know you to be of a nature as noble as your rank, and because I want you to aid and support me in the task I have before me, which is not, the Virgin help me, a light one."

Behind the obvious flattery of the words was a sincere feminine appeal for help, and her eyes were turned on the Prince with a real anxiety.

"Surely, Madame," replied William, "you do not think I should be disloyal to you? I know I have been greatly slandered, but I trust you have never believed disloyalty of me."

"Nay, nay," said Margaret. "I did not even think of disloyalty—but I have had to complain, with justice, that you have so obstinately kept aloof from my councils."

"Because my presence was useless where no one was listened to save Granvelle and his creatures, Madame."

"That is over," replied the Duchess, "and now I rely on the seigneurs and principally on Your Highness."

"I hope to deserve the trust," said William, "and to advise Your Grace for the peace and welfare of the States."

Margaret felt the words formal; she perceived that he could play with phrases as well as she, and that she was unlikely to gain much from him this way. While she was turning over in her mind the best way to gain him, William spoke again, using a frankness that was more subtle and more baffling than all Margaret's tortuous methods and policies.

"Your Excellency will not enforce the Inquisition?" he asked, he was looking at Margaret, but he noted the little movement the silent secretary made at his words.

"I have recommended mercy and gentleness to Peter Titelmann," replied the Regent, "and I ever beg His Majesty to use clemency towards the Netherlands."

"But you will enforce the Inquisition?" persisted the Prince.

"It cannot be supposed," answered Margaret suavely, "that the King will endure heresy among his subjects."

"It is then his intention to extirpate heresy?" asked William, and he remembered that conversation with Henry of France in the woods of Vincennes.

"An intention known to all the world," asserted Margaret. "His Majesty would rather lose his kingdoms than endure that heresy should flourish under his rule."

They were almost the same words that Granvelle had used in the gardens of La Fontaine.

"None the less," added Margaret, "His Majesty awaits the decision of the Council of Trent before proceeding severely against these wretches."

"Meanwhile," said William, "the Inquisitors are burning, strangling, torturing in every town in the States."

Margaret flushed angrily.

"Those who are thus punished are miserable blasphemers—would Your Highness speak for a man who remained covered while the Host passed, or one who mocked a statue of the Virgin?"

"I would not burn them quick," replied William, "nay, I would not touch their lives at all, nor yet their properties."

"Your Highness has of late been dangerously clement towards these heretics," remarked the Duchess.

"It is but natural," replied the Prince, with a smile, "since most of those dearest to me are heretics. But I do not speak from clemency but from policy when I advise Your Grace to toleration."

Again the secretary made that little movement; William could imagine the letter he would write to Philip.

"Toleration?" cried the Duchess angrily; "do you advise me to accord toleration to heretics?"

"Yes," said William, and he looked at the Spaniard sitting quiet in his corner, for he felt he was speaking not to Margaret but to Philip, and that his words, spoken in this chamber of the Brabant palace, would soon be known in that cell of the Escorial where the laborious King sat painstakingly annotating his lengthy and innumerable dispatches.

The Duchess knew not what to answer; all her policy of flattery and conciliation was overwhelmed by the rage and contempt she felt for William's views, which vexed her the more as she vaguely knew they were, from the point of policy, right.

"The Netherlands," continued William, "will never take the Inquisition. They will never give up heresy. If they are forced they will be maddened into a revolt."

"The King will know how to deal with revolt," returned Margaret haughtily.

"The King," said William, again turning his dark eyes on Armenteros, "will scarcely provoke a revolt. He has too much wisdom and too little right."

"You question the King's right?" exclaimed the Duchess aghast.

"Madame," the Prince reminded her, "the States and the cities have charters and liberties older than the sovereignty of the House of Burgundy. And both His Majesty and the Queen Mary, the late Regent, swore to protect these liberties."

"But the King cannot, will not, endure heresy!" cried Margaret.

"The Emperor was as good a Catholic as His Majesty," said William, "and he suffered heresy in his dominions when he was leaguing with the Protestant Princes of Germany. Therefore the King may suffer it sooner than spoil, ruin, and lose the richest portion of his realms."

"They would not revolt—they would not dare!" said Margaret.

"They will dare a great deal, these Netherlanders, once they are roused," returned the Prince, "as Your Grace may have observed in the great numbers who refuse to recant their heresy, even for their lives, and in those who proclaim their faith knowing well what the penalties are."

"Your Highness is very zealous in the cause of these wretched people," said the Duchess, with some bitterness.

"Call me zealous in the cause of His Majesty," replied William. "Before God, all I say and do is loyally said and done, and with the sole desire to preserve peace and contentment and obedience in these States."

"I do believe you," returned Margaret hastily; she was unwilling to provoke further disputes, and considered it easier to take the Prince at the mere face value of his words than to endeavour, as she might so easily have done, to find offence in the possible meanings of them. "I believe and trust Your Highness, and shall look to your good help and counsel to assist me."

The question of the enforcement of the Inquisition was thus evaded; it was a question Margaret preferred not to have to answer, and one William saw no use in insisting on, so well did he know the mind of the Regent and the King on this subject.

"Time," he contented himself by saying, "will prove if I am right in what I say; and also my honest purpose to serve His Majesty and Your Grace."

He rose, and again his glance travelled to the keen, sharp face of the secretary, who had now risen also and stood very respectfully in his corner.

"Does he think I do not know that he is a spy on me?" considered William, as he kissed the Regent's hand; "does she think I am going to be her tool to do hangman's work?"

He took his leave: Margaret gracious and smiling, pressing him and his family to come to her banquets, beseeching his frequent presence at her councils; the secretary all deference and stately homage.

When William had closed the door behind him, he laughed softly, then, as he turned away down the tapestried corridor, he sighed.

It might be easy to read Margaret, even to manage her; it might be easy, too, to influence and control those who composed her councils; but behind Margaret was the most powerful, the most fanatic, the most unscrupulous, the most obstinate King in the world, and behind him and his Inquisition was a more powerful force still—the entire might, the whole weight of the Holy Roman Church, armed not only with the fire and sword of this world, but the punishments of hell and the rewards of heaven.

The liberties of the Netherlands were signed and sealed in laws and charters, but what could parchment and ink avail against the temporal power of Philip; the heretics might be courageous and unyielding, but what were they compared to the spiritual power of the Pope, supported by all the great Princes of Europe?

And what could William of Orange hope to achieve if he set himself against any of the desires of Philip? Merely that speedy and mysterious death that awaited the King's disobedient servants.

These thoughts did not occur to Egmont, to Montigny, to Brederode, to the other seigneurs who rejoiced in the departure of Granvelle; they knew themselves free from even a treasonable thought, and considered themselves as safe as the Regent herself from the wrath of Philip.

But William had been educated at the Emperor's Court; he had been for a while intimate with Philip; he knew by heart the intricate policies of the Court, the blind fanaticism, the narrow vanity, the dull obstinacy of the King; and as surely as if he had seen it with his own eyes he knew his name headed a list of the seigneurs the King kept until he could one by one strike them off the paper—on the day when they would be struck off the earth.

Therefore he knew the difficulties, the perils of his position, though did no one else in the Netherlands, and he had reason for looking thoughtful while Brederode jested and the others laughed. As he was passing down the great stairs he met Barlaymont coming up.

This man, Granvelle's most detested follower, and the one who had betrayed to him the secrets of the league of seigneurs formed against him, was now entirely in disgrace. The Duchess received him with rudeness, and those who had formerly fawned on him now rushed to pay court to his ascendant enemies. He was white and haggard with humiliation and vexation, his eyes red with bitter tears.

He looked up, coloured at seeing William, and paused.

The Prince came down slowly, a slender figure in a cross-cut doublet of a peacock colour, a mantle of red and black fur; he carried his cap and switch under his arm, and was fastening his fringed gauntlets with a gold thread.

"Your Highness has soon come to the scene of your triumph," said Barlaymont.

William turned serene eyes on him.

"Ah, Baron, I do not triumph," he said, half sadly.

"I think Your Highness does when you step into the place of the man you have cast down."

"It was not I," replied William, "it was the Netherlands that would not endure the Cardinal."

"You take refuge behind that," said Barlaymont bitterly, "but it shall not save you. Now you exult. Now you think to put your foot on our party, and for a time you may. But I tell you that you have won a perilous victory."

"I know it," said the Prince.

"Now you are supreme, now you are the favourite," continued the fallen minister. "But the King is not so easily dared, so safely affronted. As surely as now you are uppermost, Philip will call you and those behind you to account—to a very stern account, Highness."

"You speak as the mouthpiece of Madrid," said the Prince, "and doubtless have good authority for these threats. Tell those who instructed you that I know my position and their power."

"I speak for myself only," replied Barlaymont, "to let you know that I am only for the moment disgraced and humiliated—down as I am, I would not change to stand in your Highness's place! Nay, I would not wear your present honours at the cost you must pay——"

"I do believe it," answered William; "but you and I are different men, Barlaymont, and my house has never shirked perilous honours."

He bent his head and passed on, lacing again his glove.

About the bottom of the stairs a flood of crimson light lay, cast by the two windows filled with red and gold glass, through which the last rays of the winter sun was streaming; and as William descended, it gradually enveloped him and dyed him red as if he was passing into a sea of blood, over his feet, to his waist, to his shoulders, closing over his head.

Then he passed into the darkness of the shadowed hall beyond and was lost to Barlaymont's watching eyes.