CHAPTER I
THE PIGEON

The sunshine of late summer was mellow in the beautiful room that looked on the garden where the last roses bloomed amid the heavy luxuriance of foreign shrubs and flowers; golden the fair light of afternoon filled the chamber as amber-coloured wine might fill a dark cup, and there was no sound save the insistent ticking of the tall clock in the corner.

The room served no particular purpose, but was a mere antechamber to the library or corridor between that and a great chamber used for receptions and feasts.

RÉnÈe le Meung stood at the window looking on the hushed and sunny garden. She liked this chamber, and spent her little leisure there. She was not commonly disturbed, as the Prince's luxurious household seldom used this handsome library, and she had come to be fond of the room, to regard it almost as her own—more her own than the hot little bedchamber under the eaves, where she was within sound of Anne's persistent bell and ceaseless shrill demands.

She knew and liked the several pieces of furniture here—the large dark cupboard opposite to the window which was polished till it gleamed like steel; the Spanish chairs with gilt leather fringed seats either side; the waxed and shining picture, as bright as a jewel and as flat as a mosaic, that hung above the door into the library, and the other picture, a portrait of a fat, stern gentleman in black, handling the massive chain round his neck, which was opposite above the other door; and the tall wooden clock with the delicately engraved steel face and the numbers cut in flourishes fine as pen-strokes.

There was no other furnishing save the three brocade cushions that filled the seat of the high Gothic window, yet the chamber had an air of richness and beauty and peace.

RÉnÈe's eyes lifted presently to the picture above the library door and dwelt there curiously.

It was a Flemish painting, perhaps a hundred years old, and represented a young saint, Agnes, Barbara, or Cecilia, being led out to martyrdom.

The virgin, robed in white, with fair hair, combed carefully in thin curls over her slanting shoulders, stood in the midst of a neat and flowery field, on which daisies and other little plants shone like stars.

She lifted her round and smiling face, which was freshly coloured and seemed never to have known care nor trouble, to a clear and lovely blue sky.

Behind her the executioners, elaborately clad in ruffled scarlet breeches and embroidered doublet, stood ready with rope and axe, and in the distance a hill town showed against the blue horizon with the distinctness of a toy model.

The picture fascinated RÉnÈe, it was so serene, so pleasant, so far removed from horror or disgust, terror or pain, that it might make a tired soul long to die that way, calm and smiling in a daisied meadow that was but one step from the paradise where a martyr's crown was already being plaited by the angels and saints.

There were martyrs now; men, women, and children as pious, as steadfast as any of the early Christians whom heathens slaughtered and to whom altars were set up all over Europe, died every day in the Netherlands. But not that way.

RÉnÈe knew it was not that way, the way of peace, with flowers beneath and the blue heavens above—nay, it was in the common day-time, amid the sordid surroundings of the market-place, with insults, with jeers, with flames, smoke, the shrieks of fellow-victims, the frenzied preaching of the monks, the groans of the crowd, with their ravaged homes perhaps within sight, their frantic children driven back by the soldiers, with all the details of pain and misery and dreariness, with none to comfort nor encourage—RÉnÈe knew that this was how the Netherlanders died—died daily by every manner of torture, by every form of terrible and horrible death.

There were some who were never seen in the market-place nor on the public gallows; these were they who were thrown into the prisons of the Holy Inquisition, and never more came forth from the dark only lit by the glare of the torture fires, or the silence broken only by groans of mortal agony and the calm adjurations of the monks.

RÉnÈe turned her eyes away from the picture. "It was never like that," she said to herself; "it lies—and who can tell that the heavens opened to receive them, and the saints crowded to welcome them? Who can tell? Who has seen it?"

She gazed into the Prince's garden, but the fairness of it brought no peace to her heart.

A warm breeze waved the costly flowers and the carefully tended trees in the groves and alleys. Two young men were playing tennis in the foremost court; the white balls sped gracefully against the green, the soft-shod figures moved noiselessly to and fro behind the nets.

In and out of the gables and crevices of the palace pigeons flew; their hoarse cooing was steady in the stillness. Now and then their strong wings beat past the window, and presently one settled on the open lattice, and moving its flexible head, gazed at RÉnÈe with an eye as red and bright as a ruby.

She looked at the bird with admiration; it was an exquisite thing, white and black shot with purple, all gleaming in the sunlight and ruffled with pride.

Then suddenly, as RÉnÈe looked, it flew straight past her into the room and beat against the black bureau.

RÉnÈe rose and clapped her hands to frighten it away, but the bird clung to the polished wood, fluttering the gleaming wings, the soft body panting and quivering.

As she approached, it flew again with a powerful stroke of the fine wings cutting the air, and beat frantically from door to door, passing and repassing the open window.

"Poor silly thing!" cried RÉnÈe; "so do we all beat about in our prisons when the door is open on the sky!"

The pigeon settled on the frame of the Flemish picture, and looked down, palpitating, the tumbled breast heaving, the bright eyes alert and anxious.

RÉnÈe stood helpless by the open window, her hand on her bosom and a little flush of colour in her grave face.

The opening of the door from the reception room caused her to turn with a start (she was so seldom disturbed in this chamber) and the pigeon to fly up and round the ceiling.

He who entered shut the door instantly and gave a quick glance at RÉnÈe in her warm, opulent beauty and severe blue gown, and then at the bird flashing like a gleam of light in the dusky darkness of the high ceiling.

It was the Prince.

RÉnÈe stood in a foolish confusion; it was long since she had seen him save at a distance, and his sudden appearance bewildered her completely.

"The bird is a prisoner?" he asked, and he spoke quite gravely, though he smiled a little.

"It will not see the open window, Highness," she replied; and as she spoke, the pigeon circled lower in exhausted fashion, and settled on the back of one of the black chairs.

The Prince put out his hand gently and easily and caught the bird by the wings, and so held it out, the coral-coloured feet contracted, the red gold-rimmed eyes bright with fear.

He took the struggling creature to the window and let it fly; it sped far away, above and beyond the tennis court.

He turned to look at RÉnÈe. Their eyes met; words rushed to her lips, and she spoke almost without meaning to and against her own awe and shamefacedness.

"Oh, Seigneur!" she exclaimed, "you are so tender with a little bird, will you not do something for the Netherlands?"

His look was surprised, almost startled. "Do I not do something for them?" he asked.

"I do not know," was wrung from RÉnÈe's bitter heart. "Your Highness is orthodox. Your Highness conforms. There were great hopes of you—I, among the first, believed; but now—the time goes—and—you do nothing!"

Then, seeing his expression of marvel, her face became burning with painful red, and she turned her head quickly away.

"It must be to Your Highness as if your dog should turn to speak to you," she said humbly. "I entreat you to pass on and forget."

"No," replied William, with perfect graciousness. "It is not my way to either pass on or forget. Tell me what you mean."

"I cannot," said RÉnÈe. "My heart is very full, and prompts me to foolishness. I am a heretic, and therefore life cannot be pleasant to me."

"But you are safe here," answered the Prince gently.

That stung her into again forgetting who he was and her own insignificance.

"That makes it more horrible!" she cried, and she turned towards him. Her flushed and glowing face was very beautiful in its utter unconsciousness of either beauty or allure. "I am safe, but others better than I die every day—die horribly—burned alive, buried alive, tortured to death. The Netherlands are a shambles, Seigneur; the smoke of human sacrifice fouls the air. And it will be worse."

"Ay," said William quietly. "If the King enforce the findings of the Council of Trent, it will be worse."

"He will not dare!" exclaimed the girl, "for that would mean to exterminate the Netherlanders."

"I do not know what he would dare," returned William, in the same low, quiet tone. "I do not know."

RÉnÈe bit her lip to keep the hot words back; the long habit of her servitude controlled her to silence. She stood dutifully waiting for him to go from her presence, and forget her amid the thousand incidents of his gorgeous life.

But instead he stopped directly before her and spoke again, kindly, but with a certain challenge.

"What makes you appeal to me? What makes you think I could or would do anything for these heretics against whom the infallible voice of the Church has just cried, 'Anathema, three times anathema'?"

His tone spurred her to answer.

"Because you are the greatest Prince in the land—because the people have faith in you."

"But I am only half trusted," he smiled. "You may see as many pasquils pasted on my walls as on those of any man in Brussels."

"That is because Your Highness will not declare yourself. At one time, when you led the faction against the Cardinal, we all hoped"—her voice faltered a little—"but since then you have chosen to be secret, close——"

"There are others," he said—"Brederode, Egmont, Hoorne——"

"Ah," replied RÉnÈe, lifted beyond her tumultuous fear of him, the sweet dread of his presence, "none of these is the man we seek. In the people is the strength, the ardour, the force; these nobles dance and jest and brawl and spend, but do they believe, do they care—would they die for their God? All in the hands of Philip, all conforming to Church and State, all bowing the neck to the Regent and Peter Titelmann with his Holy Inquisition."

"You do some wrong," said William. "Montigny and Berghen have refused to enforce the Inquisition in their provinces, and all the nobles have protested to His Majesty against the dicta of the Council of Trent becoming law in the Netherlands."

"Forgive me," said RÉnÈe, "I fear I grow bitter—I forget all bounds—I forget even that I am your servant."

"Speak to me," answered the Prince. "I would hear your thoughts. It is not often I meet with one so well versed in affairs, and so warm-hearted. You are a fair young woman," he added, with great gentleness, "to be so weighted with sad business."

The blood flowed back on her heart and left her unnaturally pale at these kind words from him; she dared to look into his face; he stood near enough for her to have touched him with a half-outstretched hand.

Her quick glance saw that his face was tired in expression; his dress, black, gold, and crimson, less gorgeous than usual, almost careless compared with his habitual magnificence.

The small head with the close waves of stiff dark chestnut hair was held a little droopingly; the charming ardent countenance, brilliant and dark, the dusky complexion showing the fine blood in warm tints, the wide vivacious eyes, the lips soft and firm, was overcast, the level brows knitted, the firm chin fallen on the double ruff of gold-edged cambric.

What was troubling him, servant of King Philip, principal adviser of the Regent, most powerful noble in the Netherlands? What care had he unless the woes of these wretched thousands the Council of Trent had condemned to fire for soul and body touched and moved him?

In his gravity, in his look of fatigue and preoccupation, RÉnÈe found hope; she stepped back from him and stood with her shoulders pressed against the window embrasure where the waxed wood gleamed in the sunlight that was reddening to the west.

"Oh, you could do so much, you could do it all," she said, and her gentle voice was rough and unsteady with passion. "I have dreamt it—others have thought it—you, you might be the man! You might redeem us from slavery, from tyranny, from misery unutterable—you are he who might defy Philip."

"I am his subject," said William, narrowing his eyes on her face, "and I am a Papist."

"But you are united to Protestant princes, and the young princes, your brothers, are heretics," she answered, as if she was pleading with him.

"I am in Philip's service," he said, and lifted his head, looking at her straightly and intently.

She was quick in her reply.

"But your first loyalty is to the statutes of this land, which Philip rends and spurns, and your first obligation is the freedom and liberty of the land you help govern."

"Ah! You know that, do you?" exclaimed the Prince, and his expressive face changed, and seemed for a moment to be joyous; then the look of reserve closed over the flash of daring and animation, and he added quietly: "The Regent has sent a protest to His Majesty telling him it is impossible to enforce stringent laws against heretics in the Netherlands. And it is likely, it must be, that the King will see reason in her arguments."

"Is it likely?" asked RÉnÈe, looking steadily at the Prince. "Your Highness knows the King."

"Why, if he does not——" said William, then suddenly checked himself.

"If he does not?" repeated the girl swiftly. "What will Your Highness do?"

He seemed to utterly withdraw into himself, and his face was smooth and serene as a mask.

"I see you still have hopes of me," he smiled.

She could not answer; she felt that he was lightly putting her off, gently showing her she had overstepped all etiquette, only to speak folly. Her enthusiasm, her exaltation were swept away by a wave of humiliation. She stood with downcast eyes, trembling in her place.

William looked at her.

"My child," he said, with that note of pity and tenderness in his voice RÉnÈe found unbearable, "there was never tyrant yet without some one to withstand, nor any oppression or cruelty some strength did not break through. Take courage, hold up your heart—some one will arise to face even King Philip and his Holy Inquisition."

She could only bend her head and say, "Forgive me, forgive what I have said——"

He raised his hand with a little gesture as if he would check her protestations, then turned away and entered the library.

There, amid the rich furnishings, in the silence, broken only by the call of the pigeons without, he stood thoughtfully, as if he had forgotten what he had come here for; the sunshine, red now as molten gold, flushed the tapestries, the rows of gilded books, the carved walls and ceilings, the bureaus of gleaming Chinese lacquers, the brocade and velvet chairs, and this slender figure of the young man standing erect, frowning, with one hand on his hip and his face strangely sombre for one so young and splendid.

Presently he turned and mounted the little step leading to the low gallery which ran round the bookcases that lined the rooms to the height of a man.

The Prince put his hand over the backs of a row of ponderous books in gilt and calf which dealt with the laws and statutes of the Netherlands; then, not finding the particular volume he required, or losing interest in his impulse, he turned away and crossed to a rare bureau of Chinese work, the smooth brick-red lacquer surface of which was heavily encrusted with gold birds and flowers, and there seated himself and stared across the rich room to the garden filled by the warm light of sunset.

His face was very grave, almost weary; his mouth was set tightly, so that the lines of it were strained, and his nostrils slightly distended.

Presently he took from his pocket a little notebook of scented leather and slowly turned over the vellum pages, which were closely covered with numbers and calculations.

It was only lately that the Prince had deigned to take more than the most superficial interest in the management of his vast affairs; he had been too great, too rich, too powerful for any misgivings as to the future. But recently it had been forced on his attention that his fortunes needed mending; his debts were enormous, many of his estates mortgaged; half of his French lordships were not paying their revenues, many others were let at below their value. For fifteen years, ever since he had had an establishment of his own, he had been spending money like water to maintain a life and a magnificence such as many emperors had not attained; his houses, his horses, his falcons, his kitchens, his entertainments were the most splendid in the land, and famous in Europe, and even his enormous income had felt the strain of such lavishness.

None of his services under Philip had been lucrative; his mission to offer the crown imperial to the new Emperor on the abdication of Charles had been a costly honour, as it had been undertaken at his own expense, and had meant the expenditure of a fortune; his emoluments from his present offices did not touch his outlay, and he was outside that circle of the Regent's favourites (such as the Spanish secretary, Armenteros) who enriched themselves from public funds, nor had he ever received any of the rewards and benefits which had permitted Cardinal Granvelle to retire a rich man.

His second marriage, put through in face of so much opposition and difficulty, had proved a disastrous failure. Anne, unbalanced from the beginning, was now almost a maniac, a disgrace and a humiliation to her proud husband; her dowry had done little more than pay for the wedding festivities, and the alliance with the German Princes, her kinsmen, which William had hoped to create, remained more than doubtful.

There were his brothers—Louis, now sick and at Spa; Adolphus and Henry, who had just left the college of Louvain,—looking to him for advancement, for John, who had set up his household at Dillenburg, was too limited in means to do anything, and there were his own son and the little daughters; responsibilities, burdens, anxieties there were in plenty, and he stood alone to meet them.

Certainly he was at present the most powerful person in the Netherlands, and had been since the fall of Granvelle, but he knew perfectly well that this power was principally rather in outward seeming than in reality, and that his position was more perilous than glorious.

He did not trust Philip; he knew that Monarch hated him, and was only waiting for the opportunity to hurl him down; and he knew Philip hated him because he feared him. Egmont had lately visited Spain, and there had been caressed and flattered and cajoled by the King into forgetting his grievances and those of the country he represented; Montigny and Berghen were ready to accept an invitation to Madrid; Hoorne stood out to trust His Majesty; but William of Orange was not for a moment to be deceived nor cajoled nor lured.

He knew the King.

And he felt a great loneliness in this knowledge, a great sense of standing alone; every one seemed to be either Philip's tool, Philip's puppet, or else utterly deceived by a few sweet words from the royal lips.

It astonished as much as it grieved William that Egmont should be so deceived, that Philip's kindness, Philip's presents, Philip's hospitality should make the envoy of the wrongs of the Netherlands forget his errand, and return praising Philip's charity, Philip's clemency, Philip's generosity.

The thought of Egmont's folly spurred William to his feet.

He walked about the room, frowning, thinking; how was he, the only man who did not fear nor trust Philip, to act now?

Supposing Philip forced the Inquisition and, in the fury of his bigotry, exterminated the Netherlanders in seas of blood and flame?

William stopped short in his pacing to and fro.

"You shall not," he said suddenly, as if he spoke to a living man before him.

And indeed it was not difficult for the Prince to conjure from the dusk the figure once so familiar to him: the meagre form, the pallid face, the mild and blank blue eyes, the projecting lower jaw with the full and tremulous under lip, the yellow-red hair and beard—the figure of the man who, with less brains than the meanest of his clerks, and more bitter insane bigotry than any fanatic devotee, imposed the terror of his rule over half the world.

William could picture him as he had last seen him in the streets of Flushing, the pallid face livid, the lips twisted into a snarl that showed the broken teeth, the foolish blue eyes injected with blood, while he stammered, in answer to the Prince's serene and courteous excuse—"Not the States, but you—you!" using the first person as if he had addressed a servant. William had turned on his heel and left him, not even escorting him as far as the shore where he was to embark.

They had not seen each other since; in spite of his constant promises it did not seem as if Philip would ever set foot in the Netherlands again, and William would have as soon walked into fire as have gone to Spain.

Yet the presence of the King was ever with him, an intangible foe, an all-pervading enemy.

The Prince did not know which of his servants, nay, which of his friends, was secretly in the pay or service of Philip.

But William also had been trained at the Court of Charles V; he had his spies in the Escorial, his agents in Madrid, and he was better informed as to the King's doings than the Regent herself, who was but a puppet in that vast game of triple intrigue and interwoven duplicity, that confusion of lies and counter-lies and manifold deceptions which the Court of Spain called statecraft.

William's thoughts went back to the same point again and again—the point that was indeed the centre of his problem—

"If the King forces the edicts against heretics—what to do?"

The final issue of slaughter, torture, emigration, and woe unutterable he saw with vision unconfused; he foresaw, too, the ruin of all the great Flemish nobles who refused to be Philip's executioners.

All Stadtholders, all magistrates, all officials who refused to enforce the King's orders would be dismissed from their offices, probably imprisoned, certainly disgraced; their estates would, of a necessity, share the inevitable ruin of the country; their fortunes would be lost in the general bankruptcy.

So much was obvious; it was obvious also that the only way to escape this ruin would be to submit to Philip, to support his policy, to fulfil his decrees, to obey him in everything with implicit loyalty.

And what was Philip going to demand?—that these noblemen, of as proud a birth as his own, become inquisitors, executioners, the despoilers of their native land or the land whose charters and liberties they had sworn to protect?

Impatient with his own thoughts and with circumstances William left the library and returned to his cabinet, where two secretaries were working by the light of lamps of red Florentine copper.

William had scarcely entered when Lamoral Egmont was ushered into his presence; the Prince took his friend by the hand and, greeting him pleasantly, led him into the outer chamber, already lit by tall candles in polished brass sticks shining like pale gold.

William had not had so much of the Count's company of late; Egmont was generally in attendance on the Regent, who flattered his vanity by affecting to lean on his advice, and since his return from Madrid he had rather shunned the society of the Prince, for he was a little uneasy, a little ashamed, at the ease with which Philip had lured him from his ancient allegiance to the plans and policy of his friend.

He stood now awkwardly, like a man with something on his mind, his fine and gallant head held rather defiantly high, his handsome features flushed and troubled. The Prince observed him closely, but was silent, waiting for him to speak.

"I have been with the Regent to-day," said Egmont at last; "she commands my assistance in the preparation of these wedding festivities. It becomes wearisome," he added, with some impatience.

The Prince made no comment; he was not very interested either in all these pompous feasts and tourneys which were to celebrate the marriage of the Regent's son (whom Egmont had brought back from Spain with him) and the Princess Maria of Portugal. It was an ill time for this extravagant and lavish rejoicing, and neither bride nor groom pleased the Prince; besides, the memory of his own costly wedding festivities was still fresh and unpleasantly vivid in his mind.

"The Regent heard to-day from Spain," added Egmont suddenly.

The Prince looked at him sharply.

"Was it an answer to the protest about the decrees of the Council of Trent?" he asked.

"I do not know—she would not make the news public. But I know the tidings were ill, the tears were in her eyes and her breath came short, and on the first excuse she could, she hurried from me and retired to her chamber. And, later, I heard the young Prince, her son, say that if all the heretics were exterminated, God would be well pleased."

"He will be a rod and a scourge, that youth," remarked William. "I never met one with so much pride. So Philip will cut the Netherlanders to the measure of the Pope's yardstick?"

"I do not say so," replied Lamoral Egmont hurriedly.

"Nay, but in your heart you know it," returned the Prince. "Now you are away from the seductions of the Escorial you know that Philip is—Philip."

The Stadtholder of Flanders winced and flushed.

"I see no cause to mistrust the King's word," he answered obstinately. "He spoke to me graciously—with charity and kindness——"

"My poor Lamoral!" exclaimed William with a sarcasm he could not restrain, "and could a little sweetness, the false Spanish honey, so easily lure you into the net? Do you really believe in Philip's caresses, Philip's promises?"

"I have always been loyal," said Egmont. "I have never offended His Majesty."

"You have—we all have," answered William. "Do you think he has forgotten that we forced him to remove Granvelle? Do you think he has forgiven the jest of the livery?"

The Count laughed.

"Why, I have dined at the Regent's table in camlet, doublet, and the device——"

"And she has smiled and flattered. She is Philip's sister," remarked the Prince drily. "Trust none of them. The King is only waiting for his revenge."

Egmont paled a little and looked at William uneasily; he felt himself again coming under the Prince's influence, again affected by the Prince's warning; he began to entertain a horrid doubt: Philip's sincerity, if that was all a snare?—if the King was offended with him beyond appeasement?—his very soul shuddered before that possibility and what it meant.

William saw his hesitancy and spoke again—spoke earnestly and ardently as a man would to save a friend.

"Egmont, believe none of them," he said. "The King loves us not—he has those about him who do not allow him to forget—keep out of his power, eschew his flatteries, trust neither him nor his creatures."

But Philip's blandishments were still too fresh in the Count's ears, he was too secure in the consciousness of his own loyalty to give more than a passing heed to any warning, much as he was impressed by the force of the Prince's stronger character. He reassured himself by recalling the Regent's favour, the King's promises of benefits and rewards; and he was a man hampered with debts, with daughters to dower presently—a man who needed magnificence, splendour, the atmosphere of Courts,—a man ductile under the flattery of the great.

"You are too prudent, too cautious," he answered, with a vehemence to cover his momentary hesitation and alarm. "I cannot overstep loyalty—you sail near to defiance of His Majesty's authority."

"If the King forces the Inquisition, what will you do?" asked William suddenly and abruptly.

Egmont flushed and stammered.

"I? I must stand by my duty—it is true these heretics must be outrooted. I am treating them with severity——"

"You will stand by the King," said the Prince briefly.

"What else?" demanded the Count. "I am satisfied His Majesty will not push matters past prudence."

"Do you call it prudence if he insists on measures being forced on the country which will mean every inhabitant being put to the sword or flying overseas?—that will mean the ruin of every trade, every industry, every business?"

"Nay," said Egmont, "the heretics will come back to the true Church."

William smiled at the weakness of this.

"If Philip were to send every soldier he possesses to the Netherlands to force the Inquisition and the decrees of the Council of Trent by the sword, not one of these people would change his faith."

"You speak as one too favourable to heresy," cried the Count.

"I speak as one knowing well these heretics and the power of the faith they hold."

"Would we could extirpate that cursed faith," exclaimed Egmont impatiently, "which, like a foul weed in a fair garden, has brought confusion and misery where there was order and peace!"

"Ah, you are a good Catholic," said William quietly, "and you, too, have tried to put a bridle on men's consciences and whip them to the mass—you have hanged and burned to clear heresy from Flanders—but you will never succeed, Count Egmont, and all your efforts will not save you from King Philip, loyal and pious as you are."

"You, too, are a good Catholic," answered Egmont.

"Ah, yes, I am a good Catholic," replied the Prince indifferently.

He turned aside to snuff the candles that stood on the low table by the heavy carved fireplace.

Egmont was silent; with every moment, with every word, these two, once so inseparably friends and allies, were widening the distance between each other.

It was evident that in the struggle between Philip and William for Egmont, Philip had won; the Stadtholder of Flanders stood firm to Church and King; he had been bought, as Granvelle had always said he could be, by a little flattery, a few promises.

But still the charm and power of the Prince held him, he regretted the old confidence, the old alliance.

"What will Your Highness do?" he asked a little wistfully.

The Prince smiled and, turning towards him, pressed his hand.

"Whatever I do, I think I shall stand alone," he answered. "You will remain my friend though, Lamoral?" he added, and his dark eyes were eloquent with affection.

"Always," replied Egmont. "Come what will, I do not leave my friends so easily, Prince."

"We will talk no more of politics when we are together, and so we shall keep our conversation sweet; the times are difficult and bloody, and it is well to forget them," replied William.

They spoke together a while on indifferent topics, their hawks, their hounds, their debts, the last extravagance of Brederode, Montigny's approaching marriage, the arrogance of the young Prince of Parma—Margaret's son—and the severe piety of his bride—the Portuguese Princess.

Only when Egmont was leaving did William refer again to the first topic of their conversation.

"Is Count Hoorne of your mind?" he asked, as he stood with his guest on the great stairs. "About trusting Spain?" he explained.

"Ah yes," said Lamoral Egmont.

"And Hoogstraaten?"

"That—I do not know."

They parted affectionately, and William returned into his palace which, for all the magnificence and luxury and splendour and moving to and fro of servitors, was somehow lonely and desolate.

The Prince mounted the gorgeous stairs slowly, with his eyes downcast; as he gained the first landing he raised them, to see the figure of his wife.

She was going up the stairs before him, half-crouching against the wall and dragging at the tapestries; her heavy handsome skirts trailed loosely after her; her white head-cloth was soiled and disarranged; she was sucking a stick of sweetmeat, and her pale flaccid face clouded with an instant expression of dislike and annoyance touched with fear when she observed her husband.

He glanced away, and turned across the landing to his cabinet; she crept on up the stairs, muttering to herself, and looking back at him with a half-snarl like a malignant animal.

So now the Prince and his wife met and passed.

DuprÈs—the skryer, alchemist, and religious refugee whom the Prince of Orange was sheltering—had arranged the two chambers allotted to him as half shop, half laboratory, in the fashion of Vanderlinden, the Elector Augustus' alchemist and DuprÈs' former master.

This fellow, partly charlatan, yet genuinely gifted, and not without a wild flash of genius at times, and real moments of spiritual insight and exaltation, had contrived, by the fascination of the supernatural arts he professed and by his wit and readiness in following the politics and scandals, the rumours and whispers of the hour, to attach to himself a considerable following, both in the Prince's household and among those who came and went in the palace, and whose visits to the alchemist (as he chose to call himself, though he had little real pretension to any of the honours of hermetic philosophy) were not noticed amid the manifold distractions of the huge establishment.

The Princess of Orange continued DuprÈs' most ardent patroness and most credulous dupe; she spent hours in his laboratory watching him tell her fortune by means of melted lead, by the markings in the blade bone of a freshly killed sheep, by the arrangement of strange Eastern playing-cards, or in observing the fusing and transformation of various chemicals into powder and essences which DuprÈs declared were the first steps to the discovery of the Philosopher's Stone.

Anne was hot on this pursuit; the events that shook the Netherlands, the threatened upheaval which might overshadow her husband, the daily torture and death of heretics, the cries arising from the tortured prisoners, the Regent's anxiety and confusion, the enigmatic attitude of the awful Philip—none of these things interested the Lutheran Princess whose father had been so splendid a champion of the Reformed Faith; but to stand over glass retorts and glowing furnaces, to listen to the Frenchman's tedious and learned explanations of matter she could not even begin to understand, to meddle with signs and wonders, to attempt to raise spirits, to experiment with perfumes, dyes, and cosmetics—all this had a deep and irresistible fascination for Anne of Orange.

And DuprÈs made his full profit thereby, for he obtained from her considerable sums of money, and when she had not these to give, jewels, ornaments, and even costly articles from her chambers. RÉnÈe le Meung had known DuprÈs at Dresden and then believed him to be a worthless, though cunning creature, and she found it hard to stand by and see him fool the Princess and mock the Prince; but William and all the members of the Nassau family who came and went in Brussels treated Anne and her doings with magnificent indifference, DuprÈs was beneath their notice, and it was not in RÉnÈe to play the tale-bearer and carry complaints of her mistress to her master, so she, too, had to spend the dreariest of hours listening to DuprÈs' jargon and watching his futile experiments, while the sickly smell of perfumes and the acrid odour of chemicals made her head heavy and feverish.

But when the Princess began visiting the laboratory alone, and the whispers and laughter grew among her women, RÉnÈe went through an agony of hot shame and bitter indignation compared to which the dullness of her former life was peace.

Anne was making a jest of herself, and RÉnÈe winced as if she had herself been humiliated, not because of Anne, but because of the name she carried.

Towards this momentous winter, when Brussels was brilliant with the pompous marriage of Alexander of Parma, Anne's women began to openly laugh at their hated mistress.

They had ceased to believe that she went to DuprÈs' studios solely to study magic and alchemy.

"It is to meet that young lawyer, Jan Rubens," they said, and made a mock of her behind her back.

RÉnÈe, sick of living, sick of loving, weak and pale with watching the ruin of her people and her faith, roused at this.

"The charlatan must go," she said, and all the women laughed again and asked, 'Why? If Anne was quiet with these amusements, why take them from her?'

But RÉnÈe repeated, "He must go."

She meant to take the desperate step of frightening the fellow into leaving the palace, and so closing Anne's dangerous means of communication with the outside world.

The Princess of Orange and a Flemish lawyer!—it was impossible that she should stoop so low or he look so high, yet in her heart RÉnÈe did not trust Anne, and meanwhile, if nothing else, she was trampling on her husband's dignity and giving cause for little men to laugh at him.

It was a wild winter day when Anne, in a bitter and stormy mood, had locked herself into her darkened chamber, that RÉnÈe went on her distasteful errand to the alchemist.

Rain was hurled against the palace windows with a force that shook the painted glass in the frames, and lay in great pools beneath the swaying and broken trees and bushes in the garden, until a great gust of wind would come and suck up the water in the hollows and dry the wet lashings on the windows and make the whole great building tremble, then it would die away reluctantly, and another black cloud would burst, drenching all again.

RÉnÈe shuddered in her worn velvet (none of Anne's women went splendidly) as she passed through the magnificent corridors and stairways to the obscure chamber where DuprÈs lodged.

To her surprise as much as to her relief and satisfaction she found him alone, though she had to use some authority to gain admission from the idle lad who kept his door.

DuprÈs was in his outer room which opened directly from the antechamber.

He was bending over an alabaster table set on gilt legs, which stood in the corner by the high window, and mixing several brilliant liquids by means of a long silver spoon.

At the sound of RÉnÈe's firm step he turned, and the sight of his face startled her, for he wore a glass mask bound tightly round forehead and chin by strips of black leather.

"Mademoiselle le Meung!" he cried, in tones of surprise and vexation, and, quickly covering his mixtures with silver lids, he took off the mask and looked at her keenly with his bright tired eyes.

"You did not wish to see me," remarked RÉnÈe.

"No," replied DuprÈs, at once courteous and composed, "you are wrong—no one could have been more welcome, but I am engaged on an important experiment, and told the lad I did not wish to be disturbed."

"Oh, Monsieur DuprÈs," said RÉnÈe, "do not seek to delude me with these labours of yours—I knew you in Dresden."

He placed a deep-seated leather chair for her in front of the cedar-wood fire which emitted a perfumed heat, and he answered calmly—

"You despise me and what I do, but there again you are wrong. If I can make invisible ink, potent sleeping-draughts, swift poisons, keen medicines, and cosmetics to keep women beautiful, am I not of some use in the great affairs of the world?"

"Ah, you suit your argument to your listener," replied RÉnÈe. "Since you cannot dazzle me with your magic and your alchemy you speak straightly, and I am thankful for it."

"Blaspheme neither magic nor alchemy," he returned thoughtfully. "All miracles are possible, but our wit is so muddy we may not achieve them. I have talked with angels and glimpsed infinity as certainly as I have been drunk and a cheat."

"Maybe," said RÉnÈe; she sat still, looking round the strange room full of curious pictures and diagrams, planetary signs, shelves of bottles and jars, rows of ancient books and astronomical instruments. She was tired, as always, and, as always, sad in spirit, and she felt that what she had to say was an effort difficult to make.

DuprÈs came and stood the other side of the wide hearth; his long black gown, his flat velvet cap, the thick gold chain round his neck, his grave, pallid, and wasted face gave him the air of a scholar long closed from the light, but his restless hands and his reckless eyes were those of a man of action.

"You have heard what is taking place in Brussels?" he asked keenly.

"I hear nothing," said RÉnÈe, "but the last scraps of gossip from the pages and servants. I never leave the palace and hardly the Princess's apartments."

"I can tell you this," said DuprÈs, with an air of lively interest, "that the younger nobles, Brederode, Culemburg, Hoogstraaten, De Hammes, have organized a league against the enforcement of the decrees of the Council of Trent. They had a meeting on the very eve of the Parma wedding. What do you think of that?" he added, smacking his lips. "Does it not look like splendid times ahead—confusion, chances, war, perhaps?"

"Is the Prince in this, or Egmont or Hoorne?" asked RÉnÈe.

"None of those, but the Count Louis—and Egmont's house is as full of heretics as Geneva, while our dear master is hardly a very good Catholic nor a very good loyalist," he added, with a slight, unpleasant smile.

The waiting-woman flushed and felt her heart beating fast.

"I must come to my errand," she said, "before we are interrupted."

"Yes, your errand," repeated DuprÈs keenly. "But first, lest we misunderstand one another, are you in the confidence of your mistress?"

"As much as anyone is, perhaps," replied RÉnÈe.

He looked at her searchingly, then his eyes fell; the waiting-woman was conscious of a sudden wave of disgust, of loathing for him and all the pretentious details of this room so obviously arranged to impress the foolish and ignorant, and this feeling gave her strength and courage to speak.

"You must leave the palace, DuprÈs," she said; "it would be better if you left Brussels, but this you must leave, and at once."

His whole face paled and hardened into a set look of defiance and alarm.

"What do you mean? Who told you to say that?" he asked roughly.

RÉnÈe rose.

"I speak on my own authority," she said quietly, "but if you refuse to take my warning, I will go to the Prince."

DuprÈs winced so palpably and looked so hideously alarmed that RÉnÈe was slightly astonished, slightly softened.

"Go at once," she added, following up her advantage; "you have made enough plunder and may now try your fortunes elsewhere."

DuprÈs rallied himself; his eyes flickered to the fire.

"What have you against me?" he asked anxiously.

"You are a plague spot, a fester in this house," answered RÉnÈe. "You seduce the Prince's people with lies and foolishness, you bring those here who have no right to enter these doors."

"The Princess wishes me to stay—go to her with these complaints, and hear her answer," cried DuprÈs, with a sudden snarl.

His words woke RÉnÈe's lurking anger; she flashed from coldness to heat.

"The Prince maintains you, shelters you, saved you—not his wife—and your gratitude is to pander to her foolishness and drain her of her very jewels by your tricks. And there is worse than that, DuprÈs, she meets here those whom she should not meet, she degrades herself by consorting with idlers in a charlatan's company. You know this—again I tell you, as a warning, you must go."

"Who gave you authority to talk so boldly?" exclaimed the alchemist in a rage. "If my honoured lady deigns to come here to watch my poor experiments, what is it to you?"

"I will not argue on this theme," returned RÉnÈe. "But if you are not gone within the week it shall be put before His Highness that you bring disgrace and disorder into his house."

A curious expression of dislike, rage, and half-amusement gleamed in the alchemist's narrowed eyes, but RÉnÈe, already hot, agitated, and half-ashamed of her own errand, her own plain speaking, was turning quickly and resolutely away, when a sudden sound caused her to stop and turn violently towards DuprÈs.

It was a woman's laugh she heard—a high, shrill, long laugh; it came from the alchemist's inner room, and was unmistakably the laugh of Anne of Orange.

In a flash RÉnÈe remembered the private door from the Princess's apartments which Anne had affected to have locked and hidden under the tapestries, in a flash she recalled the hours Anne had been seemingly enclosed in her chamber—now it was all clear enough.

"So she comes thus," said RÉnÈe, with tears in her eyes, "and you have been the go-between!"

"No one is here—no one," stammered DuprÈs, but he backed before the door, and he was colourless and quivering.

"She is there, and I will take her away," cried RÉnÈe. "Who is with her—who?"

"Go, go!" implored DuprÈs; "there is none here but a young wench who serves me. Oh, gods and angels!" he cried in real terror, as RÉnÈe slipped behind him and seized the handle of the door.

She thought he was going to strike her or use his short dagger on her, and she did not care; but the irresolution and the mocking fatalism that were so strongly in this man's character kept him from action.

"There is an end now," he said cynically, and stepped behind the great chair where RÉnÈe had sat.

The waiting-woman opened the door.

The inner room was glowing with a rich firelight which warmed the chilly gleam of the stormy daylight; the round table was set with a lace cloth and all manner of sweets, cakes, fruits, and wines; and before it, on a long couch, sat the Princess of Orange and Jan Rubens, the young lawyer.

One of his arms was round her waist, one of hers round his neck; their flushed faces were pressed together, and they were endeavouring to drink out of the same goblet, a rare thing of rock crystal, in the form of a fish, mounted in rubies and gold.

All this RÉnÈe saw in a breath, and while she saw she realized her own utter failure, the uselessness of all her years of effort, of watchfulness, of endurance, of patience; she had been outwitted like a fool. Anne had eluded her, and gone straight to that shame, that degradation from which RÉnÈe had laboured to save her; not even this service had she been able to render the Prince, and that was the bitterest thought of all.

She stood silent, holding the door open, and the two at the table stopped their foolish laughter and rose. Rubens dropped the goblet; the wine spilt over his crumpled ruff and his violet velvet suit.

"Go to your room, Madame," said RÉnÈe, and spoke as a mistress to a servant.

Anne was too frightened to answer; she shrank together as if she expected to be beaten.

The young lawyer tugged at his sword.

"That fool DuprÈs," he kept saying, "that fool DuprÈs——"

RÉnÈe could see he was half-intoxicated; she turned her back on him and spoke again to Anne.

"Go, go!" she cried. "Do you realize that you are playing with death?"

This last word seemed to recall Jan Rubens to his senses.

"I am ruined!" he cried. "I have a wife and children. God forgive me! Oh, God forgive me!"

He turned his face away and put his hands before his eyes.

Anne limped towards the door.

"Oh, make haste!" whispered RÉnÈe, through strained lips.

DuprÈs came forward; he was the most composed of the four, though there was terror in his eyes and his hands shook.

"Mademoiselle will not speak?" he said in a low voice, catching hold of RÉnÈe's sleeve. "A little foolishness, a little indiscretion—Mademoiselle would not make mischief for that?"

"A little foolishness," repeated Anne vaguely. She began to weep. "May I not have my amusements? You were always hard, RÉnÈe; do not be hard——"

"See," said DuprÈs, in a quick, eager whisper. "Keep this from the Prince, and I will go away—he will leave Brussels——"

"Make no bargains with me," cried RÉnÈe passionately, exasperated with disdain of the cringing attitude of all of them, by Anne's utter lack of dignity, by the horrid sordidness of the thing she had disclosed, which sickened her as one might be sickened by lifting a smooth stone and discovering beneath a foul reptile. "You will go—all of you—and at once."

The young Fleming now stumbled forward into the outer room. He was a big, clumsy man, fresh-coloured, blonde, fair-bearded, and blue-eyed; his face was grey and distorted with terror; he stood before RÉnÈe shuddering like a lashed hound. She noted, with further contempt for his utter cowardice, that he neither tried to bribe nor threaten her.

"Will it be the rope—the rope?" he asked. "Or would the Prince grant the sword—for my family's sake?"

"Go," cried RÉnÈe, "escape from here like the thing you are!"

She caught Anne's limp hand and dragged her to the door.

"If he kills me," said the Princess sullenly, "he will take a life that is worth nothing to me." She twisted round in RÉnÈe's grasp to throw insult at the two men standing foolishly side by side.

"And you could neither strike a blow nor say a word, tricksters and churls!"

She said nothing more while RÉnÈe led her back through the palace until they came to the great staircase window which looked on the courtyard.

A cavalcade, muffled against the weather, was leaving the palace gates.

"My husband going to the Council," muttered Anne. "My husband!"

When they reached the Princess's apartments, RÉnÈe locked the secret door and took away the key.

Anne watched from where she crouched over the fire.

"I suppose you despise me, hate me now?" she asked.

RÉnÈe turned her beautiful haggard face towards her mistress, and for the first time in her long bondage she spoke what had ever been in her heart.

"I always despised and hated you," she said.

"I knew it," answered Anne apathetically, and sat silent over the warmth of the flames till she fell heavily asleep.

But the waiting-woman paced her little chamber in agonies of torment, weeping unbearably bitter tears of pain and shame and unavailing regret.

William of Orange rode up to the beautiful Brabant palace in company with Egmont, who had been dining with him, and several gentlemen who were in attendance on both the noblemen.

Egmont was silent, uneasy, almost sullen; he felt that Philip was not carrying out the golden promises he had made in Madrid, and that he had been more or less deceived and cajoled; and though his loyalty was not shaken, he was humiliated at appearing as a man of straw in the eyes of William of Orange.

The Prince too was uneasy. He knew, by means of secret information, that the Regent had received dispatches from the King during her son's marriage festivities, and had kept them concealed. He did not think this seemed as if they contained good news; he saw everything very gloomy and black ahead, very troubled and difficult, but at least he hoped that the King had taken up some definite attitude. To a man of William's temperament, Philip's endless irresolution, interminable delays, shifty evasions, blank silences, and long inaction were the most unbearable of policies.

They reached the palace wet with rain and blown with wind, to find most of the other members of the Council there before them, and already gathered in the presence of the Regent in the splendid council chamber of the ancient Dukes of Brabant.

Baron de Barlaymont, the last representative of the fallen party of Granvelle, was there seated humbly in his usual quiet corner, where he was seldom noticed and seldom spoke. His colleague Vigilius, President of the Privy Council, was also present; he had but recently recovered from an almost mortal illness which had seized him while preparing an answer to the Prince of Orange's speech against the Inquisition and the corruption of the Court, and had been left by it almost useless, almost senseless.

Thomas Armenteros, Margaret's Spanish secretary, was there, and Admiral Hoorne, gloomy and sad.

The Duke of Aerschot, the one noble who had unflinchingly supported all Philip's measures, and the Sieur de Glayon, completed, with the arrival of the Prince and Egmont, the members of the Council of State; but the ancient and feeble Vigilius was supported by several of the learned doctors of law who composed the board of the Privy Council of which he was President.

The Regent sat in her usual place at the head of the long table, working nervously at the usual length of embroidery which served to give employment to her restless fingers.

She had aged of late; her face had hardened, and there were strands of white in her thick, heavy hair. The firm set of her powerful jaw and her majestic deportment gave her a resemblance to the Emperor her father, but her eyes were the eyes of a woman overwhelmed and frightened.

When all the councillors were seated, she dropped her work on to her lap and looked keenly and anxiously from one face to another—the dark, handsome face of Orange; the old, feeble face of Vigilius; the downcast, bitter face of Barlaymont; the beautiful, uneasy face of Egmont; the brooding, sullen face of Hoorne; and the sleek, smiling face of Armenteros, the secretary, who held the dispatches in his hand.

Margaret spoke; her shaking voice was rendered half inaudible by the sound of the rain beating on the leaded casements where glowed the arms of Brabant, and the wind struggling with the heavy window-frames.

William rested his hands on the soft Persian cloth that covered the council table, and he, in his turn, looked steadily at the Regent.

But he was not considering, nor reckoning with, Madame Parma; behind the figure of this confused, agitated woman, whose task was too great for her wits, William saw the real master, the pale King going to and fro his masses and his cell in the Escorial, from whence he directed the destinies of the Netherlands.

"You shall hear the Royal commands, seigneurs," finished the Duchess, and she glanced at those two fine shapely hands of William of Orange resting on the cloth in front of him, and her look of fright deepened as if they had held a bared sword towards her breast.

"Read, read," she cried to Armenteros, in great agitation. She caught up her work, but tears were in her eyes, and she could not see the stitches.

The secretary rose. He was a mere clerk, but since Granvelle's downfall he had grown fat on the spoils of the corruption of the Court, and now affected the great lord; he was dressed in the Spanish style, close doublet and short cloak in plain black velvet which disdained the French and Flemish finery of button, lace, and feather, and wore a great ruff of wired cambric so stiff that he could not turn his head.

He bowed, but formally, to the councillors, and announced that the present dispatches had been received a few days before the Parma wedding, had been placed before the Privy Council and by that body reported upon, which report would be read after the Royal commands.

Hoorne glanced at Orange, Egmont kept his eyes down, Vigilius seemed scarcely less agitated than the Regent; he shook as if slightly palsied, and the water stood in his eyes.

Armenteros read the dispatches in a high-pitched clear voice, which rose above the outer tumult of the wind and rain; his dark, precise figure showed clear-cut in the grey winter light against the dark panelled walls of the council chamber.

Philip's dispatches were prolix as always, but this time they were neither obscure nor irresolute nor enigmatical. The King had hesitated long, but now he was resolved, and he spoke out his resolution with no uncertain words.

The decrees of the Council of Trent were to be enforced with full rigour, the Inquisition was to be given full power and authority, all the placards and edicts against heretics issued by the late Emperor were to be enforced, such heretics as were at present in confinement awaiting judgment were to be at once executed.

In brief, the ancient religion was to be re-established by sword and fire and faggot, by fine, by banishment, by ruin; if need be, by the extermination of a whole people.

There was to be no further temporizing, no appeal; the secular judges were commanded to give all possible assistance to the Inquisitors, and the Stadtholders were abjured to protect them; all loyal subjects of the King were to assist him in his ardent desire to uproot heresy, or to be reckoned among those they protected.

The passionate sincerity of the writer, "who would rather die a hundred deaths than be the lord of heretics," illumined the diffuse and rambling letter as a flame does darkness; the fierceness and force of this tremendous decision was a mighty thing, the power of one overmastering passion giving to a little man the semblance, the terror of greatness.

When the secretary folded up the letter and sat down, a sound like a sob went through the room; then bitter protest, like a cry of despair, broke from the pale lips of Egmont.

"This is not what His Majesty told me, this is not what was promised—before God it is not!"

"His Majesty has written to you, Count," said Margaret hurriedly.

"Yes," admitted Egmont, "and the written words were different enough from the spoken ones; yet I hoped—I still hoped——Ah!" he broke out again passionately, "by Christ, I hoped for something better than this!"

So had Margaret; the emphatic severity of the King's mandate, the now obvious hopelessness of his ever coming in person to the Netherlands, the ruin ahead of the whole country if the Royal orders were obeyed—these things had kept Madame Parma from rest and ease ever since she had first read the fatal dispatches; and now her doubt, fear, and vexation were beyond concealment.

Hoorne spoke now; he was not given to many words, and his speech was commonly to the point.

"What do you intend to do, Madame?" he asked grimly, and his usual disdain of women was heightened by the sight of Margaret's obvious weakness.

"His Majesty must be obeyed," said Barlaymont and Aerschot almost in a breath; Vigilius and the secretary murmured an assent; only William of Orange remained silent, still looking down at his peaceful hands folded on the edge of the table.

"Read the comments of the Privy Council," said the Regent desperately; and the secretary rose again, and in his clear, expressionless voice read out the tedious report of the Privy Council, which merely amounted to a strong recommendation to the State Council to endorse the Royal commands. When he had finished a passionate murmur broke from Hoorne and Egmont.

"What can I do?" asked Margaret, answering them before they spoke. "I have made all representations to His Majesty—I have told him the state of the country, your own protests. You, Count Egmont, have yourself been to Madrid and laid the case of the Netherlands before His Majesty."

"I will undertake no such mission again!" cried the Stadtholder of Flanders stormily.

"It were wise not to," said the Seigneur de Glayon, with meaning.

"What is to be done?" asked Margaret weakly, and she looked at Armenteros, the man on whom she had learnt to rely, and he in his turn gazed at the rain-splashed panes of the tall window at his side.

William of Orange spoke for the first time since he had entered the council room.

"There is nothing to be done," he said, "but to obey the mandate of the King."

They all looked at him, half in terror, half in relief, Egmont almost incredulously.

"You!" he exclaimed. "You who were ever so hot against the Inquisition, against religious oppression—you who would leave the very weavers and labourers free to choose their faith?"

"What I have said I maintain—I think you know, Count Egmont, that I maintain my words—but I have said already, at this very Board, all I can say. And now the King's attitude is clear, his commands are definite, his wishes unmistakable—let them be fulfilled."

So saying, the Prince turned his dark eyes on Margaret, and there was an expression of challenge, of reserved strength and judgment in them that caused the Regent to feel doubtful of the support William so calmly offered.

"To obey is to put a match to straw," she said in real terror, "but to refuse is impossible."

"Ay, impossible," said William. He pointed to the dispatches lying before Armenteros on the many-coloured cloth. "There is Philip's mandate. Let it be obeyed."

"We have no excuse to disobey," admitted Hoorne sourly. "But what will the Netherlanders do?"

"What will any of us do?" smiled William. "Let His Majesty's wishes be put in force, and then it will be seen what all will do."

These words seemed to further frighten Margaret, who had always been in awe of the powerful Prince of Orange.

"I count on Your Highness to support me in these troubles," she said anxiously, and her tired eyes, full of tears, fixed searchingly on William's serene and inscrutable face.

He slightly bowed his head, without replying; Egmont traced the lines of a yellow tulip in the pattern of the cloth with his forefinger; Hoorne stared desolately in front of him; Aerschot, Glayon, Barlaymont appeared amazed and frightened; an air of gloom, of foreboding, of dismay rested on all. With the exception of the Prince of Orange, all seemed like men confused.

Margaret turned desperately to the secretary: "The edicts and placards of the Inquisition, the decrees of the Council of Trent, must be published in every village, immediately——"

Then Vigilius rose. He had been one of Granvelle's hottest partisans, one of the sternest upholders of the Inquisition, one of the most uncompromising believers in the extermination of the heretics; but now that the fiat had gone forth, now that the die was finally cast, he was afraid—afraid of a whole nation driven to the extreme of agony and despair.

In a long, confused, and wearisome speech he feebly spoke for delay, for compromise, for the avoidance of scandal and riot; in general, for further evasion of that final issue which Philip had suddenly forced.

He shook with age and sickness, his hands beat the air with palsied movements, he altered and retracted his words—the burden of his speech was fear, fear and terror obvious in every sentence.

When he at last sat down, wiping the tears from his eyes, the other councillors moved impatiently. All felt that the moment had come; the sword so long suspended over the Netherlands had fallen, and further procrastination was useless.

"The matter is now between the King and the people," said the Prince of Orange. "Put before them the King's commands—and hear their answer."

Again Margaret trembled to hear him speak; her blurred eyes strove to pierce the fast-encroaching winter dusk that was descending on the council chamber, so that she might read his expression.

"His Highness is right," said Egmont. "The placards and edicts must be issued."

"I see us all ruined," muttered Hoorne, tugging at his black beard, "but we must obey."

All agreed; no one supported Vigilius, who sat shaking in his chair, counselling "a little delay—a little delay."

"You have resigned, learned President," William answered him. "Before this storm breaks, you may be safely in shelter."

"Methinks this will be a storm from which there will be no shelter," murmured the old man.

"Speak encouraging words, or hold your peace, good sir," cried Margaret distractedly; and turning to Armenteros she gave the orders for the enforcement of the edicts and placards.

No one noticed the increasing darkness, which now almost prevented them seeing each other's faces; no one heard the sound and wrath of the storm without, the whirling of the waters, the combat of the winds. All were listening to the scratching of the Spaniard's quill while he took down the instructions which were practically the death-warrants of a whole nation; all watched him as he leant sideways to catch the light—him, and the white blur of the paper over which his quill was moving.

At length it was done; the Regent bent from her chair, took the pen, and blindly signed.

William of Orange drew a great breath.

"Now we shall see the beginning of the most terrible tragedy the world has known!" he whispered to Hoorne, and his tone was almost one of exultation, the tone of a man who sees his enemy face to face, out in the open, at last.

The Admiral crossed himself in silence; Egmont gave a passionate ejaculation; the rest were dumb and motionless in the darkness.

And so the thing was done, and Philip's mandate obeyed.

Margaret rose and called for candles; Armenteros put up his papers; the councillors got to their feet.

Severally they took leave of the Regent; when the first candles were brought in, William of Orange was at her side, and she saw his face, pale and extraordinarily aglow with some inner emotion.

He took his leave with no added word, and she could find none with which to detain him, though she longed to try and test him.

He was on the palace steps with Lamoral Egmont at his side; they paused a second watching the loose, fiercely driven clouds flying over the seven churches and proud palaces of Brussels, the long broken lances of the rain dashing on shining wet roof and spire.

"'Tis the Angel of Death riding the whirlwind—the clouds of havoc gather from the four corners of the earth," said the Prince. "God send us a good deliverance."

AS the Prince of Orange returned to his palace he passed a mansion which defied the stormy night with light and music, and from the great doors, which emitted rays of rose and gold on to the bitter rain, a band of young cavaliers came forth, mounted, and turned their several ways, with joyous farewells to each other.

William recognized the persons and voices of several—Brederode, Hoogstraaten, Culemburg, Nicolas de Hammes, commonly called Golden Fleece, and his own brother Louis, who was newly come to Brussels.

The Prince reined up his wet and steaming horse and waited for the Count, who bared his head to the rain at sight of his brother.

"From the Council?" he asked, as he brought his horse long-side his brother.

"Yes," said William briefly, and neither spoke again as, bending before the weather, they made their way to the Nassau palace.

For once the Prince did not appear at the almost public table he kept, but dined alone with Louis in his private apartments.

The princely chamber was warmly lit by the yellow glow of fair wax candles; the gay tapestries, the heavy furniture gleamed with gold; among the crystal and lace of the dining-table gold shone too, and in the brocade of the chairs and in the great heart of the fire burning behind the sparkling brass and irons on the wide brick hearth.

In the magnificence of their persons the two young men were worthy of the gorgeous setting. The tawny velvet and violet silk of the Prince's attire was drawn and purfled with gold, the triple ruff that framed his dark face as high as the close waves of hair above the small ears was edged with gold lace, gold flashed again in the chain which was twisted in heavy links round and round his neck.

Louis wore black satin cut over yellow velvet and a falling ruff of Malines lace; his fair and charming face was as fresh as a flower, his eyes flashed as brightly as any gold in the room, and the ruby clasps fastening his doublet rose and fell with his eager and impatient breaths.

William usually ate with a hearty appetite, and enjoyed the luxurious pleasure of a richly set meal; but to-night he let the courses pass almost untouched, and broke the pieces upon his plate and left them.

Neither did he speak much, though it was not his habit to be taciturn. After he had given his brother a brief account of the momentous Council he was silent.

But Louis glowed with swift anger and boundless enthusiasm.

"We have not been idle," he declared. "The festivities, the weddings of Parma and Montigny, have been a fair pretext for our meetings. We have already a league among ourselves."

"I know something of that," answered William. "It will be as dangerous a matter as Egmont's livery."

"Do you bid me hold back—now?" cried Louis impetuously.

"I bid no man hold back," replied the Prince quietly. "Who are with you in this design?"

"Brederode, Ste Aldegonde, Culemburg, Hoogstraaten, de Hammes, Montigny—all the younger nobility——"

"Montigny!" said William softly, "and he has just taken a wife."

"Is she not a beautiful creature?" answered Louis. "Half of those who jousted before her would have given half their rents to win HÉlÈne d'Espinoy. Montigny loves his wife," he added, in a lower voice. "Did you not notice it at the jousts?"

"I hope he will not go to Madrid," remarked William. "I hear that he and Berghen think of undertaking an embassy to Philip."

"Egmont—will he not go again?" asked Louis.

"No—he is still sore at the success of his last mission."

The Prince rose and crossed to the hearth, resting his elbow against the chimney-side and his face in his hand.

Louis, still seated at the table, glanced at his brother wistfully.

"You take my news coldly," he said in a tone of disappointment. "I thought that you would be rejoiced to hear that there was this league to protect the rights of the nobles and the liberties of the people."

"It was no news to me," answered William. "I knew your designs. You are all young and ardent and reckless—God keep you all."

Louis bit his lip and drank the last drop of yellow wine that lay like liquid amber in his sparkling crystal glass.

"We do what we can," he said, with great emotion, "and none but a coward would do less at such a time as this."

William was silent; his face was turned away from his brother and his shoulders drooped a little.

The young Count flushed all over his sensitive face at what he thought the Prince's disapproval.

He rose and stood before the brilliant disorder of the dining-table in the attitude of a man justifying himself.

His ardent gaiety had gone; he was passionately grave, passionately in earnest.

"If Your Highness will not support me in what I do, I must go on alone. I too am one of these doomed people, I too am a heretic. I am one of those whom the Church and Philip have thrice cursed, thrice damned; and every poor artisan whose flesh smokes above the market-place, and every wandering preacher who is tortured to death, is my brother in God. I cannot speak of these things without tears. We may tourney and dance and feast, but the nation is bleeding to death from a thousand wounds, and I cannot go on in my own easy safety——"

"It is not your country, Louis, nor your quarrel."

"Yes, it is my quarrel," returned the young Count eagerly, "because I too am a heretic. This cause I espouse, to this quarrel I devote myself."

"You are knight-errant," said the Prince.

Louis flushed again.

"No, I am nothing but a poor soldier, as which I shall live and die."

William suddenly moved so as to face him.

"How far will you go?" he demanded.

"As far as any."

"Would you take up arms against the King?"

"With all my heart and, I think, God's blessing," answered the young man gravely. "If Egmont should lead a rising against the King——"

"Egmont!" said William quickly. "Egmont never will—Egmont is a good Catholic. Egmont is loyal to Philip."

"Even now?"

"Even now—he is not the man of this moment."

"Brederode will lead us, then," replied Louis.

"Brederode is reckless, imprudent——"

"He is popular, loyal, brave. Then there is Ste Aldegonde——"

"Another fiery spirit—a poet, too!"

"Culemburg, then De Hammes."

"Too low in rank—you yourself are better suited than any of these."

Louis replied soberly—

"If I am called, I am willing to serve—to the death."

"I know," said William, "I know."

Louis stood doubtful, distressed, his brown fingers pulling nervously at the edge of the fine tablecloth.

"Would you not be willing for me to take this charge upon myself?" he asked earnestly and imploringly.

The Prince did not reply; his face seemed drained of blood beneath the brown skin, his dark eyes were black with the dilation of the pupils.

"And you, you?" urged Louis. "What will you do? Bow the neck to Philip?"

He moved away from the table, crushing his hands together.

William turned now and spoke; he made an effort with his words. Choosing them carefully, arranging them exactly, often faltering in the endeavour to force his wide and far-reaching thoughts into speech; in all he said was great patience, great sincerity, great gentleness.

"You must not think me cold. Indeed I am not cold. I know Spain and Philip better than you—better than your friends. I know his power, his resources, his persistency—above all his power! 'Tis the King of half the world. And now he has spoken, he will not go back from his word. Do you think the Regent will long serve his turn? Before this present crisis she will fail utterly. A dull woman. Philip will send Alva and an army—the finest army in the world, Louis. It was Alva who advised this stern decree. I know that—a great soldier, the Duke of Alva, a loyal Catholic—he will come. Nothing will stop Philip now. No laws, no charters, no promises—he has condemned to death the Netherlands, and he will not fail to send the executioner."

Louis listened intently, one hand pressing the ruby buttons on his breast, his eyes eagerly on his brother's face.

"I have been like a watchman over this land since King Henry spoke to me in Vincennes wood. I have seen havoc and ruin and desolation coming nearer and nearer," continued the Prince mournfully; "I see it very near now. I see this country overwhelmed as if the dikes had been cut down and the sea were rushing in—a flood no man can withstand—and do you think I wish to see all I love dash forward vainly, to be swept away by the first wave of this deluge? Ah, Louis," he added, in a tone of anguish, "what is your defiance against Philip's might—what are all the gentlemen of Flanders against Alva's army? But a stone in the way to be flung aside and forgotten."

"Are we, then, to submit?" asked Louis in a low voice.

The Prince took a restless turn about the room.

"Philip is not to be defeated by knight-errantry, but by subtle ways, like to his own—by policy, by patience, by long years of endeavour and waiting. He is not to be met openly in the field, but snared in secret places."

"Meanwhile, we shall grow old and palsied," cried Louis, "and all the hot blood in us will go for nothing."

"You see the glory of the combat, I see the anguish of the defeat," said William slowly. "You remember the skryer in Leipsic? How he saw the future in the crystal—and the end, all blood and blackness? To me too it seems like that—darkness ahead and death—the sacrifice of all our house."

"Speak words of good import," cried the Count. "Why should God utterly forsake us? Will He not set high the standard of the good cause?"

William looked at him thoughtfully.

"Yea, if one gave all one had, if one suffered and waited, if one sacrificed—all—for what one dared to think the right, perhaps God might help one—God! But doth He help, or rather leave us to depend on our own poor energies?"

Louis was startled by the emotion in his brother's voice, by the look of his pallid face on which the dews of anguish had started.

"What do you mean? What will you do?"

"I do not know," said William. "I do not know. I say I see it all dark ahead—last night the stars were red and flashing through the blackness of hideous clouds, and methought it needed no great fancy to believe these tales of spectral battalions who nightly combat in the skies and rain blood upon the earth. Two days ago at Leyden the sentries felt warm blood upon their hands and heard the shouts of battle overhead."

Louis shuddered.

"At Utrecht and Haarlem they saw armed men fighting in the air," he answered; "one told the very pattern of the flint-locks and the manner of caps they wore."

"I would consult my skryer," smiled William sadly, "but the strange rogue has left me on the sudden. And we need no skryer to warn us of what is before us, and no portents in the air to prepare us."

"And I, what must I do?" asked Louis, with a noble and winning deference to the other.

"Wait," replied the Prince. "Wait—persuade the others to do so too. Put no other check upon yourselves but prudence—be secret, take only those on whom you can rely into your League—watch Ste Aldegonde, Brederode, and de Hammes; they are too reckless—do not trust Charles Mansfeld—rely on Hoogstraaten and Culemburg——Ah, what can I say!" He passionately caught the young Count by the shoulders. "I leave it to your own heart, your own judgment; but remember that you will be needed, do not fling yourself away."

"Princely brother," answered Louis, and the tears stood in his eyes, "I am always at your service, and only ask leave to die at your feet."

William kissed him on the brow, then releasing him, drew from the gilded pocket that hung at his own waist a curious iron ring set with a large opal the colour of milk, and holding blood and fire in the heart.

"Wear this," said the Prince. "It is an Eastern talisman which shall protect you from evil."

Louis slipped it on his signet finger.

"When another than myself brings you this, you will know that I am dead," he smiled.

"God grant that I may never see it save on your hand!" exclaimed the Prince. "And now I give you leave to go—you are due at Hoogstraaten's supper?"

"Yes; will you not come?"

"Not to-night—my duty to all. Until to-morrow, adieu."

They touched hands again, and each looked at the other with a certain wistfulness, as if their hearts were full of a yearning affection they did not dare express.

When Louis had gone William returned to the fire, which was falling into ashes at the edges.

Of all the conversation with his brother one phrase suddenly leapt to his mind unbidden; he seemed to read it in the dying heart of the flame—

"Montigny loves his wife."

The four words gave the Prince a strange pang in the remembrance; he crossed the room and looked at a little painting of Anna van Buren, the first Princess of Orange, which hung on the opposite wall.

The pale prim face, her gentle eyes, her drooping mouth, the very dress she wore, and the jewel round her neck which he had given—he recalled her so clearly—even as she was painted now—yet how remote she was; she had made no impression on his life, and he never thought of her now save as he might think of some playmate of his youth—for they had been married at seventeen, and she had died almost before he had reached full manhood; but she had been to him what the wives of most great nobles were to their husbands—a little more than the wives of Hoorne and Brederode were to them, a little less than Egmont's wife was to him. In the misery and humiliation of his present marriage he could recall her gratefully.

But love—"Montigny loves his wife"—the words came again to him like the echo in a shell held to the ear, and sounded sadly in the loneliness of the Prince's heart. "If a man had great difficulties and a hard and toilsome task, a loving wife would be a marvellous comfort," he thought. Then he laughed at his own fancies. "A man must not depend on women. There are things to be done in which no woman can help."

He went to the window, opened the shutters and looked out upon the storm.

The rain had ceased, and the bitter winds were tearing the black clouds apart and hurling them across the heavens; the curled thread of the new moon glimpsed here and there amid the vapours like a frail barque amid the wreckage of a hideous sea.

The fair fields of Brabant and the proud gay town of Brussels were blotted out in the darkness, but a faint strain of melody rose fitfully on the winds: it was the carillon from some hidden clock tower.

William of Orange stood silent, holding the window casement open with either hand and listening to the storm that for him held the sound of gathering armies, the tramp of feet, the galloping of horses, the flapping of banners straining at their poles—the coming of great multitudes onrushing in the agony and the exultation of supreme conflict.

Throughout the Netherlands the Inquisition was again formally and officially proclaimed; it was answered by a cry of passionate wrath and hate, and bitter despair and agony, intense enough to have reached Philip in the cells of the Escorial.

Foreign merchants and workers fled, houses of business were shut up, shops closed, banks ruined; commerce—nay, the ordinary business of life—was almost suspended; whole districts emigrated, abandoning their work and their property. In a short time famine threatened, riots broke out, and the daily barbarous executions were scenes of frantic rage on the part of the maddened population which the officers of the Crown sometimes found it difficult or impossible to repress; more than once the victims were rescued from the very stake.

Brabant hotly protested that the introduction of the Inquisition was illegal and expressly against the distinct provisions of "the joyous entry," and the four principal cities came forward with a petition to Margaret which she could not ignore. The matter was referred to the Council of Brabant; even the creatures of the Government had to admit that no ecclesiastical tribunal had ever been allowed jurisdiction in Brabant, and the great province was declared free of the Inquisition—with the result that it was soon overcrowded with desperate refugees from all other parts of the ravaged Netherlands.

Pasquils, lampoons, open letters issued by the thousand from the secret presses, and every morning saw fresh ones pasted on the gates of the great nobles in Brussels. Egmont and Orange, as the most powerful and most popular nobles, were passionately called upon to come forward and protect the country.

Nor did these people—middle-class artisans, weavers, tanners, dyers, printers, carvers, merchants, shop-keepers, farmers, all the great mass of the population, the industrious, sober, quiet men who were slowly building up the prosperity of the country—lack for generous championship, even from those nobles who were Catholics.

Baron Montigny, in the first flush of his joyous marriage, the Marquis Berghen, who had always been unflinching in his refusal to acknowledge the Inquisition, the younger Mansfeld, refused to enforce the Edicts within their provinces.

Egmont lent his authority to the work of persecution in Flanders, but Orange declined to support the Inquisition within his Stadtholderships.

Meanwhile Louis of Nassau was consolidating the famous Compromise or League of which he and Ste Aldegonde had laid the foundations during their meeting at Spa, and which had been joined by a considerable number of the younger nobility; while Hoorne and Orange, Hoogstraaten and Montigny, had been jousting in the lists at the ChÂteau d'Antoine before the beautiful bride, HÉlÈne d'Espinoy, Louis and Ste Aldegonde were going from tent to tent, from cavalier to cavalier, laughing, jesting, and secretly obtaining promises of signatures to the Compromise, which consisted of a vow to resist "the tyranny of foreigners, and especially the Holy Inquisition, as contrary to all laws human and divine, and the mother of all iniquity and disorder."

By early in the new year, the energies of Louis and Ste Aldegonde, both of whom had been active during the extravagant marriage feasts of the proud Parma Prince, had secured over two thousand signatures from the younger nobility.

The great nobles and Stadtholders they did not attempt to approach; the secret Compromise, being so zealously passed from one eager young hand to another, was scarcely a document anyone in authority could sign.

But Montigny and Berghen knew of the League, and were prepared to protect the members; the Prince of Orange, if he did not openly encourage, at least made no effort to check the ardent labours of his brother.

The full details of the scheme, nor the heights of daring to which the covenanters had gone, were not disclosed to him; Louis feared the disapproval of the Prince's wise patience, and the other young nobles were even doubtful as to which side His Highness would ultimately espouse, so delicately did his discretion hold the balance, so completely was every one in the dark as to his final intentions.

On the very day of the Parma wedding, while the princely couple were being united with the full magnificence of the rites of the Catholic Church, twenty gentlemen of the Reformed Faith gathered in the house of Count Culemburg on the horse market and listened to the preaching of a famous Huguenot, Francis Junius, the pastor of a secret congregation at Antwerp. This man, young, brave, eloquent, already in hiding, combined with Louis of Nassau to draw up a petition or protest to the Government on the ever-important subject of the Edicts.

So came in the first stormy months of the year 1566.

The price of grain rose to hitherto unheard-of figures, for the ground was untilled, the harvests unsown; all business with foreign lands was at a standstill, for no stranger would venture into a country which lay under such a ban, nor trust their goods in Dutch ports. Industry was paralysed; the great busy cities, formerly some of the finest and busiest in the world, were silent, deserted, and desolate under the monstrous tyranny which had overwhelmed them.

The Inquisitors-General, De Bay and Tiletanus, had received personal letters of encouragement from the King; Peter Titelmann too received the Royal praise; and the three continued their work of horror and terror, agony and blood.

Towards the beginning of the year Berghen resigned his posts, pleading his inability to obey His Majesty in the matter of religion; Meghem soon followed his example; Egmont lamented that he had not resigned all his offices when in Spain—"As he would have done," he declared, "had he known what His Majesty's intentions were."

He, however, maintained his official position, and continued to behave with severity against the heretics in Flanders; so he vacillated, pleasing neither the nobles nor the Regent, neither of whom dared rely on him.

William addressed a letter of remonstrance and protest to the Duchess, plainly avowing his views, pointing to the state of the land, and condemning the policy of the King.

Margaret, in despair, wrote to Philip, putting all these things before him, and beseeching him to reconsider the decision with regard to the Inquisition.

Philip did not answer, and William of Orange, who did not lack spies in Madrid, knew why: the King was preparing the levies with which Alva was to try his hand at bringing the rebellious Netherlands to subjection.

But if Philip was making busy preparations in secret, William was not inactive; still hoping by calm and patience to avert the worst of the disaster that still threatened—the arrival, namely, of Alva's army—he summoned a meeting of the nobles and grandees at Breda, and in a series of conferences, disguised as hunting parties, endeavoured to bring all to concur in some reasonable petition to be presented to the Regent, the main scope of which was to be an appeal for the convocation of the States-General.

But this project was too daring for the loyal nobles and too quiet for the leaguers; the conferences ended with no result, save that of sending Meghem, alarmed and disgusted by the violence of the younger nobles, definitely over to the side of the Government.

Indeed, soon after Meghem announced to Margaret his discovery of a widespread conspiracy among the heretics, who were ready, he declared, to the number of thirty-five thousand armed men to march against Brussels, and he placed before the Regent a copy of the Compromise.

These extravagant statements were supported by Egmont, who declared that there were great tumults preparing among the heretics, and that the Government must act without delay.

The alarm of the Regent was intense and was scarcely soothed by the Prince of Orange's calm recital of the sober truth—namely, that a great number of nobles and gentlemen were coming to Brussels to lay a petition or request at the feet of the Regent.

Meeting after meeting of councillors, of grandees, of Knights of the Golden Fleece, were now held, while the question was hotly argued whether or no the covenanters were to be suffered to present their petition—the Prince of Orange claiming that they were entitled to all respect; Meghem, Aremberg, and Barlaymont insisting that the palace doors should be closed in their faces. The case grew so desperate that the Duchess proposed to fly to Mons, and was only with difficulty persuaded to hold her post.

As to the petitioners, it was decided they should be admitted, but unarmed; the guards at the city gates being strengthened to prevent any armed followers gaining the entrance to the city.

Brussels ran mad with joy at this concession; it was almost as if the Inquisition had been abolished.

Margaret of Parma, sick with agitation and dread, shut herself up in her chamber and wept by the hour together. To her brother she wrote that the time had now come to either use force or withdraw the Inquisition and the Edicts. Philip, intent on gathering together Alva's army, kept his sister in an agony of suspense, and neither let her know that her successor was already preparing to take her place, nor that he had finally decided to crush the Netherlands under the weight of the secular sword, since the spiritual authority of the Inquisition had failed.

All through the tumultuous, anxious days, March sweetening into April, RÉnÈe le Meung watched the comings and goings of the Prince from the window of her high little chamber.

Early in the morning she would be awake and watching till the hour when he rode forth. Well she came to know that early view of Brussels wrapt in the blue haze of morning with the gleam of the faint spring sun on the twin towers of Ste Gudule; well did she come to know the figure of the man she watched for, his way of sitting the saddle, the trick of throwing his cloak, the fashion of touching up his horse as he passed the gates.

Sometimes he did not come before she was called to her duties, and the vigil would have been in vain; sometimes she was not able to get back to her post before he returned; but there was hardly a day passed that she did not contrive to see him once—if it was only that distant glimpse.

She had not spoken to him since he had caught the pigeon for her, and her days were now entirely occupied with Anne, whose melancholy and fury daily increased. Since DuprÈs and all appertaining to him had left the palace, the Princess hated RÉnÈe with a bitter, cowering hate that sometimes cringed and sometimes threatened and sometimes railed, and at all times made life a torment for the waiting-woman—a torment which was only endurable because of those moments when she could escape to her room, and perhaps also because of some inner and consoling conviction that she was standing at the post of duty, and that perhaps in the great events, the terrible events so rapidly shaping, she too might take a not unworthy part.

The very spring itself seemed sad that year; the green on the trees, the violets and daffodils in the Prince's gardens brought no joyousness with them; the low winds were laden with melancholy; the long pale days, the chill nights, the cloudless sunsets, the cold dawns held no comfort nor cheer.

In RÉnÈe's mind, as in the mind of every other man and woman of the Netherlands, was the thought of the fires in the market-places, of the daily hideous executions, of the cries of agony and despair, bereavement and madness rising from every town, from every village; of the exiles fleeing to England, carrying with them their skill, their knowledge, which was the wealth of the nation; of broken fields and unsown harvests, of children starving and lamenting in the streets. She thought of the great, magnificent churches all over the land, where every day costly and solemn ritual was performed, and where in the grave, rich gloom of sanctified beauty, gorgeous music, gorgeous vestures, the loveliness of art, the splendour of texture, marble, silk, tapestry, coloured glass, crystal, gold, jewels were all dedicated to the service of the God to Whom were sent up the flames of the living torches which lit the market-place, to Whom was offered the blood of maids and boys, mothers and children who had no sin beyond their steadfastness to the Truth as they believed it.

"And still He makes no sign," thought RÉnÈe. "And still He sends none—angel nor man—to smite and deliver."

When the first days of April came, she saw the Confederates, headed by Brederode and Count Louis, go past the Orange palace on their entry into Brussels; the two leaders halted with the Prince, who was entertaining them, and RÉnÈe, leaning from the window, heard Brederode say as he crossed the courtyard, "Eh, well, here I am, and perhaps I shall depart in another manner."

The splendour of the Nassau mansion was no longer what it had been, though it was still magnificent. Richly appointed tables no longer stood ready for all comers at all hours of the day and night; the great number of servants was reduced; there were fewer balls, concerts, and feasts; the Prince bought no more tapestries, pictures, statues, rare books, nor costly plants; the jewel and the silk merchants no longer waited every morning in his antechamber, nor were vast sums any longer expended on hawks and hounds.

But for these two guests a generous welcome was prepared, and William himself met them on the stairs, kissing each on either cheek.

RÉnÈe crept back to Anne, who sat among her German women, lamenting, complaining against her husband, against the Netherlands, against her own miserable fate.

The child played at her knee, but she regarded it with utter indifference. RÉnÈe picked up the little girl and carried her away; the sound of the Princess's voice travelled across the apartments.

"Am I to be ruined for a parcel of heretics? Curse the day of my birth, curse my marriage day!"

The third day of April, which dawned over Brussels fair as refined silver, found RÉnÈe at her post, leaning from her narrow window, its harsh stone frame serving as a sombre setting for her face, so unconsciously beautiful and so sadly serene.

She saw the Prince ride away with his gentlemen; the long green cloak in which he was wrapped could not quite conceal the glitter of the Order of the Golden Fleece flaming on his breast.

RÉnÈe knew that he was going to attend the Regent in Council, for this was the day that the Confederates or Covenanters, as they were severally named, were to present their Petition to Madame Parma; and to-day, instead of going downstairs to her duties beside Anne, RÉnÈe put on a hood and cloak of black cloth over her white linen whimple and her dark yellow gown, and went from the palace and out through the great gates into the street.

She allowed herself this much advantage from the secret hold she had over Anne—this one day's holiday; the night before she had told her mistress of her intention, and Anne had said nothing.

It was strange to be in the streets after the long confinement in the palace and the palace gardens; it was strange to be one of the people, amidst the ordinary life of a great city, after having been so long merely part of the machinery of a princely establishment.

RÉnÈe received a sense of energy, of hope, of courage in thus finding herself free and one of the crowd. She wished she could learn some trade or art by which she could earn her own living; but she was too old to be taken as an apprentice, and even were she not, she had not sufficient money to keep herself while she acquired it, nor one friend or relation to whom she could appeal to help her.

No, there was no means of life open to RÉnÈe but the one she was following, especially in these times of ruin and panic, when so many people were out of work, and those who had money were clutching it tight.

But she was not one to be daunted even by hopeless difficulties; she asked so little of life, cared so little when it ended, that if she had been considering only herself she would have left Anne's service and tried to find another great lady to take her, or have gone as a servant into some Protestant family. But she stayed with Anne because to wait on his wife, to control her, to soften her furies, to check her excesses, was the sole poor unknown service she could render the man for whom she would have gladly done anything.

And now that she knew Anne's sordid and shameful secret, she had a power, an influence over her such as none other possessed, and could restrain her and bring her to some reason when all else had failed. The Prince might entreat his wife to appear on some state occasion, and she would rudely refuse; but when RÉnÈe insisted, she would suffer herself to be attired and go.

So with a sigh RÉnÈe relinquished her fleeting dreams of freedom and a sane, wholesome life among her own people.

As she moved further into the city she felt with overmastering pain how lonely she was, how unutterably lonely; all the companies she passed—women together, families, men with their wives and sisters—emphasized the terrible feeling of her loneliness.

If it had not been for Philip and the Holy Inquisition, her life would not have been broken, her heart seared; she would have been as one of these; she would have had parents, money, position, friends, probably a lover—in a word, happiness.

Then she remembered that she was only one of thousands left desolate—perhaps more desolate than she was; fifty thousand, she had heard, had died under the Inquisition and the Edicts, and how many aching, maddened hearts had each of these deaths left behind? RÉnÈe felt rebuked in her complaint of her loneliness; she shuddered as she went down the hill to the church of Ste Gudule—shuddered though the spring breezes were soft and the spring sun warm.

On the steps of the church she paused and looked down at the city lying in the hollow of the hills, all the spires and vanes of the Town Hall and the palace, of the various guilds in the market-place rising delicate and erect into the pale and pure sky, while on all the irregular tumbled-looking roofs and gables the sun changed lead to gold and casement glass to diamonds.

She turned, lifted the heavy curtain at the low door in the greater door, and entered the church whose twin towers she had watched so constantly that they had come to mean to her the Papist power which dominated the land.

She had not been in a Romish church since she was a child and had crept into the great church of St. Baron at Ghent. She had not meant to enter this now, but a fascinated sense of horror drew her on—horror because she could not regard this faith with toleration; it stood to her for an epitome of idolatry, cruelty, wickedness, oppression, and uncharitableness.

She was not a Protestant by chance; her whole nature detested the Church of Rome. She stepped forward into the gloom, pulling her hood further over her eyes.

At first she could distinguish nothing but the seven thick wax candles burning on the altar and the red lamps flickering their eternal light before the shrines.

Then from the mystical shadows began to loom the shapes of pillars, massive, yet so dimly coloured as to seem impalpable, as if they were beneath the sea; brocades, marbles, altars set with jasper, silver, and chrysolite became visible in the side chapels, here and there the rapt faces of angels showed from some dark painting on the wall, the air was redolent of the incense, the wax smoke, and the scent of flowers. This mingled perfume was near as ancient as the church, which had remained for so long enclosed from the light and air that it seemed as if built underground.

Such light as there was streamed richly from the coloured glass windows where saints and bishops blazed together in wheels and panels of glory.

RÉnÈe fixed her eyes on the High Altar which was flushed with a shadow like golden-red wine, in the middle of which the flat, gold, ruby-studded doors of the shrine that held the Eucharist flashed and shone like the Eye of God itself. Beyond, the pillars and arches of the Lady Chapel rose up dim, and appearing of a translucent quality in the shade which here, flushed with the light from gold-coloured windows, was sea-green and amber behind the crimson of the altar.

Round the huge candlesticks of dark red Florentine copper were alabaster bowls, almost transparent, veined with violet, which held the first lilies of the year in sweet clusters—the lilies from wood and field called Easter lilies from the time of their coming.

The church was empty save for here and there the dark bent figure of a peasant before some side altar.

RÉnÈe could not bring herself to bend the knee before the idols her father had perished to disown, and, with a trembling in her limbs as if some physical power had seized her and a choking in her throat as if the sweet thick air was poisonous, she turned and fled quickly into the pale sunshine without.

The excited people were already beginning to gather to watch the passing of the petitioners on their way to the palace.

RÉnÈe did not know which way the procession was to pass, and she was largely ignorant of the city, but she followed the direction in which the great mass of the crowd was going.

She particularly noticed this crowd and its demeanour, the soberness, the earnestness, the silence of these people.

None of them seemed to be treating the occasion as a festival or as a holiday, if they showed a certain satisfaction it was grave and serious; very few of them were armed, and all of them were restrained in gestures and speech.

There were some gentry, on foot and on horse, but the great number were burghers, traders, and apprentices belonging to the seven great guilds of Brussels.

RÉnÈe following in the wake of this crowd climbed the hill again, left the towers of Ste Gudule below, and came out on the heights above the town where stood the parks and mansions of the great nobles, and the Brabant palace which was the residence of the Regent.

As she passed the palace RÉnÈe caught sight of the spare figure and excited face of the skryer DuprÈs, as he pushed his way through the crowd.

RÉnÈe was disgusted to think the man was still in Brussels; she had hoped that he would find it wise to leave the Netherlands, or at least the town; but probably he had given up his dangerous occupation of rhetoric player and, with the spoils of the Nassau mansion, had established himself as a respectable Papist.

Now a great movement shook the crowd, a low hum rose from the throats of the men, and the women began to tiptoe excitedly and to lift their little children to their shoulders.

RÉnÈe was at the back and could see nothing, but two men who had a point of vantage on the steps of a mansion near by gravely helped her up beside them.

One asked her if she was a Fleming?

"My father was hanged for a heretic in Ghent," answered RÉnÈe, "and I am in the service of the Prince of Orange."

It gave her pleasure to mention the Prince and not his wife; and it was truly his service in which she was.

The two men took off their caps to her.

"The Spaniards will not hang many more Netherlanders," one remarked; and they supported RÉnÈe against the balustrade of the steps so that she could see over the heads of the closely packed people.

Suddenly the humming changed into a clapping of hands and a deep shouting that made RÉnÈe's blood tingle with excitement and deep emotion; she pushed back the hood from her flushed face and gazed at the procession which now appeared marching up the street and turning in at the splendid gates of the palace.

All were on foot and unarmed, all were nobles, many of the highest rank, and all were young and gorgeously attired, so that it was a magnificent procession, such as all the great festivals of Brussels had not seen before, which now wound under the portals of the Brabant palace.

"He who goes first," said the man next to RÉnÈe, "is Philip de Billeuel."

"And some think it an ill augury that he should be lame," remarked the other doubtfully.

RÉnÈe had indeed remarked that the young nobleman who led the petitioners halted unmistakably.

"And he in the black and blue," added her informant, straining his voice to make it heard above the clapping and the shouting—"with the look of fire, who is answering the cries of the people—is Nicolas de Hammes whom they call Golden Fleece, and he behind in the sable cloak is Ste Aldegonde——"

RÉnÈe had already recognized these two as well as several others whom she had seen at the Nassau palace, and as the rich and brilliant company of gentlemen passed before her, there were several of the eager, proud, young faces she knew as related to some of the noblest families of the land.

The enthusiasm of the crowd became almost piteous in its eager gratitude to these nobles who were making themselves the champions of the people and protesting so openly and in such an imposing fashion against the loathed Spaniards and the loathed Inquisition.

Encouraging shouts, adjurations, blessings, and thanks were showered on the petitioners, and some of the more reckless, as Golden Fleece and Ste Aldegonde, replied by shouting curses on the Inquisition and the Cardinalists. RÉnÈe recognized Count Culemburg and Count van der Berg, the Prince of Orange's brother-in-law, glittering in French brocades and Genoese velvet and great chains about their necks and round their hats.

Finally, closing the procession, came the two leaders—Henry Brederode and Louis of Nassau.

They walked alone, arm in arm, the last of all, and for them the affectionate greetings of the crowd arose to a frenzy.

Count Brederode looked fitted to be the hero of such a moment: his tall and noble figure, his military carriage, his handsome face flushed with pleasure and triumph, his eyes sparkling with a reckless fire, the full locks of blond hair streaming on to his falling ruff, gave him the kingly presence of a leader of men.

He wore a suit of rose cloth of silver, and a great mantle of peacock-coloured velvet; in his high black hat was a long heron's feather clasped by a diamond.

Beside his grandeur Louis of Nassau looked very slight and youthful; he was more soberly dressed in dark blood red, with a great ruff of many points rising up above his face.

And whereas Brederode appeared mightily at his ease and greatly pleased with his task and his reception, Louis held himself more modestly and looked grave and even anxious; but there was about him a gallantry almost moving.

And so the last of them went into the palace, and the crowd broke up and stayed about in groups, talking eagerly together in excited voices while they waited for the reappearance of the petitioners.

RÉnÈe wandered into a side street and entered a baker's shop which was filled with tired women and children.

The waiting-woman bought bread and cake and a kind of sweetmeat, and while she ate she listened to the conversation that flowed round her like many currents of the one river.

For the theme was always the same: the executions, the torturings, the ruin falling on trade and work.

And all spoke soberly without laughter or jest, and many had eyes swollen and frayed from weeping.

One only was unconcerned: a small child who stood in a world of his own, oblivious to the talk of death and ruin crossing above his head, while his eyes were fixed with an eager smiling look on the piece of sweetmeat RÉnÈe held.

She found something marvellous and yet terrible in this utter absorption of the child in his own thoughts, in his calm, and his pleasure.

She put the sweet into his hand and left the shop.

For more than an hour she wandered about the streets, and, when she made her way back to the Brabant palace, the petitioners were beginning to leave.

Reports of their audience, that had been passed from soldiers and servants within the palace to those without, were already rife among the crowd and eagerly repeated from one to the other.

The Regent had wept when Brederode had made his speech, the tears had run down her face while the famous Compromise was read, and when all the members of the deputation had come forward, one by one, to make the "caroale" before the Duchess as a mark of respect, and she had thus had time to severally note their appointments, their importance, and their number, her agitation had increased so that Barlaymont had tried to reassure her: "What, Madame," he had said, "do you fear these beggars, who do not know enough to manage their own estates and then must needs prate of state affairs? Had I my way they should leave the palace quicker than they came!" This the Cardinalist was reported to have uttered loudly enough to reach the ears of some of the gentlemen, who repeated it among themselves with wrath and indignation.

RÉnÈe waited until the Prince came from the palace; he rode out of the gates with Egmont, looking unhappy and troubled, at his side. The two grandees were greeted less warmly than the confederates. As neither had openly sided with the people, and as Egmont, at least, was a strict Catholic and something of a persecutor, they were not so popular as they had been in the days when they caused the downfall of Cardinal Granvelle.

RÉnÈe stood in the roadway, where the passing of the Prince cast dust on her gown; she had one glimpse of his dark ardent face and he was gone.

Suddenly she felt very tired; the strangeness, the unnaturalness of her life, without home or ties, without friends or interests or diversions, and always supervised by a dull and ceaseless tyranny, weighed on her with the horror of tragedy. And this deep concealed passion, this strong faith, this devotion that lit this dreary life like a beacon on a desert was not in the nature of comfort, nay, rather it was a light that lit up dullness, dreariness, and barrenness which darkness would have mercifully concealed.

Had not all the suppressed feeling in her breast turned to this worship, she might have been happier, for she would not have known so keenly what she lacked; as it was she knew not even the peace of apathy.

Clouds were gathering over the April sky as she returned to the palace; every one talked of the Petition and what success it was likely to have; the streets were all filled with murmurs of hope, of doubt, of eagerness, and of expectation.

Twice more in the ensuing days did Brederode and his following present themselves at the Brabant palace, the first time to receive the Petition which was returned to them with Margaret's answer.

Madame Parma, as usual, referred everything to the King; the Petition should be forwarded to His Majesty, from whose well-known clemency there was everything to be hoped.

As for herself, she had no authority to suspend the Inquisition nor the Edicts, but she would give orders to the Inquisitors to behave with discretion; meanwhile she adjured the petitioners to act as men loyal to King and Church.

Brederode's third audience was for the purpose of answering this not very satisfactory concession; he urged the Regent to cease all religious persecution until the decision of the King arrived, to which Her Highness replied she could not go beyond her former answer, but that Count Hoogstraaten should show them the instructions to the Inquisitors, commanding them to moderation.

There was nothing more to be obtained from Madame Parma, and the confederates separated with such hopes as they were able to cherish, and such expectations of the good results of Margaret's letter to the King as their knowledge of Philip allowed them to entertain.

The evening of the day that Brederode had been for the last time to the Brabant palace, the Prince of Orange was dining with Mansfeld, who was sick with an inflamed eye; his companions were Egmont and Hoorne, and the four nobles discussed with gloom and foreboding the situation which Brederode and his fellow-petitioners had taken with such reckless gaiety.

Egmont was the most uneasy of all; the memory of his late visit to Spain and how deftly Philip had twisted him to his will still rankled in his mind. He had seen that the King had not kept one of the lavish promises he had then made, yet the Count, though conscious of being fooled (he had utterly refused to go again to Madrid), yet could not wholly disbelieve in Philip nor bring himself to any action that might seem disloyal to His Majesty.

He had refused to associate himself in any way with Brederode's party, and he was one of the few Stadtholders who obeyed Philip by using his civil authority to enforce the decrees of the Inquisition.

Yet he saw as well as any man the utter ruin to which Philip's policy was bringing the Netherlands; his Brussels palace was full of refugee heretics, and he was still regarded by the people as their hero and their possible champion.

He even ventured now to predict possible concession as the result of the forwarding of the Request or Petition to Philip.

William glanced at him with smiling eyes in a manner that brought the blood to Egmont's cheek.

"You speak against your own wit," remarked the Prince quietly. "You know that the King will not be moved from his purpose by the Petition of these young men, led by such as Brederode."

"It were better for all," interposed Count Hoorne sourly, "if Brederode had kept out of politics."

"Politics?" smiled William. "Poor Brederode knows little of politics! But he is brave and loyal, Count; I can conceive good uses for Brederode."

"His present uses," said Egmont bitterly, "seem to be to embroil us all. You know of this banquet to-night?"

"Yes," answered Mansfeld bitterly. "My son is there—I would to God he were elsewhere."

"There will be much treason talked," said Hoorne. "And Brederode in wine is no better than a madman."

William glanced at the clock in the corner.

"We are almost due at the council chamber," he said, rising.

"You work late," remarked Mansfeld.

"And to little purpose," said Hoorne, gloomily pulling at his black beard. "Eh, Prince?"

"To little purpose, truly," replied William gravely. "The affairs of the Netherlands are settled in Philip's Cabinet in Madrid, not in the council chamber at Brussels."

He smiled to himself thoughtfully and picked up his long velvet mantle from one of the brocade chairs.

"We will go round by the horse market," he added, "and see how this banquet progresses."

"Nay, I beseech you," said Mansfeld eagerly. "Keep away from all such dangerous sport!"

"Not sport nor pleasure," replied the Prince, "but Hoogstraaten is there and I would bring him away. And if the company is riotous I will disperse them," he added, with a sure and entirely unconscious certainty of power.

Mansfeld shrugged his shoulders; his inflamed and bandaged eye irritated him, and he was deeply vexed at his son's connexion with the confederates.

"This is an affair well enough for boys," he returned peevishly—"boys and roysterers—but the Regent's councillors had best keep away."

William knew perfectly well what Brederode's banquet was likely to be, and how it would be regarded by the government; he knew also that Hoogstraaten had been persuaded to attend against his will, and wished to save him from too deep an implication in the riots in which the feast would undoubtedly end; nor was William without some kindly feeling for Brederode and a desire to check him in his dangerous recklessness.

Hoorne disliked Brederode, but he would gladly have done a service to the gallant Hoogstraaten, and Egmont was always eager to curb any display against the Government, so the three nobles, on taking leave of Mansfeld, set out towards the Culemburg palace where Brederode held his dangerous feast.

They had no sooner dismounted and crossed the courtyard of the mansion than the tumultuous uproar that reached their ears more than justified their apprehensions.

The banquet of the confederates had indeed degenerated into a riot and an orgy.

An argument had been raised as to what name the party, now so loosely designated, was to be called, and at the height of the discussion Brederode had sprung to his feet and related what Barlaymont had said when they first came into the presence of Madame Parma—

"'What, is Your Highness afraid of these beggars! People of little power who cannot manage their own estates!'"

When this sarcasm of one of their greatest enemies was repeated to them, the company, inflamed with wine, were strung up to a fever pitch of fury at the insult which had been offered them—all gentlemen of rank and noble blood.

Brederode seized the moment; taking a leathern wallet and a wooden bowl from one of his pages, he held them aloft over the glittering feast.

"Very well!" he cried. "They call us beggars! We will make them fear that word! We will contend against the Inquisition, and be loyal to the King until we are beggars indeed!"

He then filled the bowl with wine and drained it to the health of the beggars.

The party name was received with mad enthusiasm; it took the humour of all present; amid yells of approval and shouts of applause the wooden bowl was handed from one to another and each drank to the new party name. When the circuit of the table had been completed the bowl and wallet were fastened to one of the pillars which supported the ceiling, and the rites by which the petitioners received their new name were concluded by each member of the company hurling some salt and bread into his goblet, and repeating two lines of doggerel which some one's heated wits had instantly produced——