CHAPTER I
DILLENBURG

Life in the ancestral castle of the German Nassaus at Dillenburg was very different from what the life in Brussels, Antwerp, or Breda had been.

The old Countess of Nassau, Juliana of Stollberg, was the head of this household, and with her lived Count John, his wife the Landgravine Elisabeth, and their family; here, too, resided the unmarried daughters of the house, Juliana, and Magdalena—lately betrothed to Wolfgang, Count of Hohenlohe; while the married daughters, Anna, the Countess of Nassau Saarbruck; and Elisabeth, Countess of Solms Braunfels; Catherine, Countess of Schwarzburg; and the Countess van der Berg were continually coming and going on visits to their old home.

There was not much money and no magnificence at Dillenburg when the eldest son, practically an exile and a fugitive, arrived with his sickly peevish wife and his train of a hundred and fifty—very shorn splendour for the Prince of Orange, but a considerable strain on the resources of Count John.

But the welcome was none the less passionately sincere in love and pride, and William was treated by his family with the same deference as if he had been still the favourite of Charles V, or the greatest man in the Netherlands.

His brothers, Adolphus and Henry—a youth who had just left College—returned eagerly to Dillenburg to join him, and Count Louis left Brederode, who was revolving one scheme after another that came to nothing, and hastened to Germany.

Meanwhile William waited for news from the Netherlands, for news of the proceedings of Alva, and for answers to the letters that he had sent to the German Protestant Princes—the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse.

Now at last he had begun to reap the fruit of that foresight which had induced him to engage in his second marriage despite the lively disapproval of Philip.

That marriage had been as disastrous as his worst enemies could have hoped, but at least it had given him some claim on the friendship of Anne's relations.

William had also asked the old Landgrave Philip to send him a Lutheran preacher, who was immediately and joyfully dispatched, and the Prince of Orange occupied the first leisure he had known for years in studying the New Testament and listening to the exposition of the tenets of Martin Luther.

But Alva, Philip's swift and sure right hand, had lost no time in striking him one blow that hit both his pride and his affections.

His eldest son, the Count of Buren, was beguiled by Alva from school in Louvain (where William had left him, relying on the high and ancient privileges of the University) and sent to Spain, where he had gone a willing captive, flattered and caressed, for he was a child and knew nothing of his father nor of Philip.

Thus the first move was to Alva, and the Prince, bitterly wounded and outraged, had had to admit that his sagacity had been at fault; what foolishness to rely on any charters or privileges where Alva and Philip were concerned.

He took this grief silently and applied himself to long and careful preparations for the part he intended to take upon himself. He was hours closeted with Count John, hours with the Lutheran minister; his private table was covered with papers on which theological arguments were mingled with numerical calculations—estimates of the worth of his now available estates, estimates even of the value of his jewels and plate, rude maps of the Netherlands, lists of the towns with their several strengths, rough draughts of letters to the Emperor, to the King of France, to the Order of the Golden Fleece.

He was in correspondence with great persons in England and in close touch with the Huguenots of France.

In a few months after his departure from the Netherlands he had already in his hands the threads of a widespread league against Philip, which his industry, his high prestige, his astute statesmanship had accomplished single-handed.

Nor was he wantonly rushing into rebellion against the man to whom he had sworn loyalty.

Philip had in everything justified the suspicions of the Prince.

One of Alva's first acts had been to arrest Egmont and Hoorne, whom he had before caressed and flattered; Montigny and Berghen were prisoners in Spain. Alva had seized the keys of every city in the Netherlands. Margaret was the mere shadow of authority, and Alva was absolute.

He seemed to have but two objects—blood and gold: the blood of the heretics, that was to smoke to heaven to please the nostrils of the Lord; and the gold of the heretics, which was to flow to Spain to please the eyes of the King.

In both ways were the Netherlands to be drained, of life and of treasure; and so Alva hoped to avenge the outrages which had been offered to both spiritual and temporal power.

The estates of the Prince of Orange had been threatened with confiscation, and he himself, together with Montigny, Culemburg, Van der Berg, and Hoogstraaten had been summoned to appear within fourteen days before the Council of Troubles, an arbitrary tribunal established by Alva which had already earned the title of the Council of Blood.

The Prince of Orange, therefore, was not organizing a rebellion against a pacific monarch who was prepared to leave him in peace if he remained in exile; he but struck at one who was striking at him, his friends, his country, with blind, fanatical fury, a cunning treachery, a narrow cruelty that was almost inconceivable.

And in striking at William of Orange, Philip had roused more than was in his nature to believe in, as a man intent on killing little helpless animals may carelessly wound a sleeping lion, whose presence he had no wit to guess at.

So William, silently, made his preparations against Spain; so the tranquil autumn and the vintage passed, and the spring came gaily back to Dillenburg.

The Nassau women employed themselves in household tasks, eagerly talking together, eagerly helping the men whenever might be, fervently attending the plain Lutheran service in the plain Lutheran chapel, and listening reverently to the impassioned sermons of the preacher.

These days were sweet to RÉnÈe le Meung; she knew them as only a prelude to great trouble, perhaps great agony, yet for the moment she was happy.

The women treated her kindly, she felt one of a family, not part of the mechanism of a household; there was no need to keep such wearing watch on Anne, who was helpless for evil here. Every one she spoke to was of her own faith; there was no longer in her ears the scoffs and insults of Papists, no longer horrible tales of torture and death repeated on every side.

Here were peace and kindness and affection. And if Anne writhed under the confinement, the monotony, the simplicity, alternating between bitter melancholy and passionate fury, RÉnÈe found the atmosphere as refreshing to her parched soul as water to dry lips.

And her greatest joy—her secret, almost holy joy—was in the attitude of the Prince; for in him she discerned now, beyond all doubt, the destined champion of her country and her faith.

It was in the early spring that Count Louis came to Dillenburg. He stopped one moment to receive his mother's warm salute, then went straight to the Prince.

William was in a room which was fitted up as a library, a small and modest chamber near the chapel.

The books on the simple shelves were mostly theological works collected by William's father, treatises and pamphlets in Latin and French, written when the first heat of fierce controversy had raged over the schism in the Church.

Before the pointed Gothic window was a desk of heavy black wood, piled with papers and furnished with a large brass ink-pot and sand-dish and a tall silver hourglass.

In the centre was a large and worn Bible.

There was no furniture in the room beyond a few chairs covered with faded tapestry and the shelves of books; the April sun, fine and clear, filled every corner of the room and showed the dust on the books, on the floor, and in crevices of the shelves.

William rose instantly from his desk and embraced his brother, then led him to the deep window-seat, which was filled with red cushions from which the sun had taken the brightness.

Neither of these young men, once so splendid, were any longer magnificent. William wore a suit of dark blue camlet with a ruff of plain needlework, and no jewels beyond a yellow topaz signet ring; Louis was habited in a brown riding suit and boots dusty to the knees: he had lately lost something of his bloom and freshness, and his brilliant eyes were tired and shadowed; but his firm-featured, beardless face, framed in the graceful blonde curls, retained the old ardent charm.

Round his neck hung a silver "beggar" medal and a tiny silver cup.

"Any news?" asked William, gazing at him affectionately and still retaining his hand.

"Some news, yes. At Cleves I met the Spanish post—Berghen is dead," replied Louis in a moved voice.

"Dead?" echoed the Prince. "So soon?" And his face saddened as he reflected that this was the first sacrifice from among the Netherland nobles who had dared to disobey Philip. "Dead?—and in Spain!"

"In a Spanish prison," amended Louis. "They say he died of home-sickness and disappointment. God knows! At least it is certain he is dead, and there seems little hope for Montigny. No one believes he will ever leave Spain. His poor wife is wearing out the altar stones with kneeling to her saints! May they comfort her!"

"Why would he go!" exclaimed William. "He was infatuate, as all of them. And Egmont?"

"There is no hope for Egmont; he and Hoorne are surely doomed," replied the Count sombrely. "The Countess Egmont and her children will be utterly ruined, for every thaler he possesses is held confiscate."

"And this is the reward of his loyalty," remarked William grimly. "To what end did he stoop to play the persecutor at Valenciennes! Yet he was always sanguine."

"Even after Alva came, and others had warned him, he would not believe. He had a sweet letter from the King, written after the Duke sailed and complimenting him on his loyalty—he put all faith in that."

"Ah, Philip!" cried William, with a deep accent of hatred.

"It was a trap," continued the Count—"a trap for all of us. Granvelle and Spinosa planned it with Alva."

"I know," said the Prince. "The design is to utterly subjugate the Provinces, execute all those who were against Granvelle, re-establish the Inquisition, exterminate all heretics, and make the Netherlands subject appanages of the Spanish Crown as are the Italian states—that is Philip's policy. Mine," he added, with a certain passion, "will be to prevent it."

"Surely you can, surely you will," said Louis, with enthusiasm and reverence.

"Yet do not think me sanguine," answered the Prince gravely. "I know what I undertake. I know the might of Spain. Egmont might have done something, but that chance is past. Oh, I am not sanguine! I think before this struggle is over Granvelle may count all his enemies among the dead. Berghen has gone—Montigny, Egmont, Hoorne are doomed—nay, are we not all doomed?"

"Doomed?" repeated Louis quietly.

"By Philip. He has judged and condemned us, and his vengeance has many faces. If you go on, Louis, go on as I shall, as a man devoted to a cause almost hopeless—as one under sentence of death."

"It does not frighten me," answered the young Count simply. "I love the cause and I love the commander!"

He kissed his brother's hand.

"It is some time," he added, "since I entreated to be your lieutenant."

William smiled.

"Where is your 'beggars'' league now, Louis? Drowned as it was born, in Brederode's wassail bowl! What did those men prove? Good fellows, but none of them of any worth save Culemburg and Ste Aldegonde."

Louis flushed.

"But I have some men gathered together," he said. "A poor little army, it is true, but something."

"That is your work, not Brederode's," answered William.

"Poor Brederode!" exclaimed the Count generously. "He was brave and loyal, and now all his schemes have failed. I think he will die of it—I left him creeping to Germany, a disappointed man."

"Leave him; he is happier than some better men," said the Prince. "And to our affairs. I too have been enrolling an army—a poor thing too, refugees, mercenaries—but something."

The two brothers looked at each other with a keen and flashing glance.

"You will invade the Netherlands?" asked Louis eagerly.

"If I can get the money, I will," answered the Prince, and he spoke quite simply, as if it was not in the least a wonderful feat to even contemplate—this marching against the finest army in the world with a handful of raw recruits and mercenaries.

"Ah, the money!" sighed Louis. He too was of an heroic temper, he too took the tremendous task simply; but he was daunted by the mention of what had completely checked his own gallant efforts.

"We need," said William, speaking with a precision which showed that he had well studied the subject, "at least two hundred thousand crowns. There was," he added, with a smile, "a time when I could have raised as much from my own estates—but not now!"

"It is not so much," remarked Louis hopefully.

"Half," continued William, leaning forward and taking some papers from under the great Bible, "I have already had promised me from my agents in Antwerp, Amsterdam, Leyden, Haarlem, and other great towns; some has been promised by the refugee merchants in England."

"And for the rest?"

"Culemburg, Van der Berg, and Hoogstraaten will help—the House of Nassau must make up the balance."

Louis sat thoughtful, his eyes narrowed while he made a mental calculation.

"I could raise ten thousand," he said at length.

William added the sum to the list he held in his hand.

"John will help," he remarked. "And I, I will do what I can. Would we now had the money we once spent on pleasure—yet those were golden days, and I regret them not."

He rose and paced up and down the room, holding his papers.

"There are the Huguenots under De Villars—they would do something. Then I think many would join us. Alva is so hated."

Louis remained in the window-seat, gazing out on the golden April day which was now fading to a close.

"I will do whatever you tell me," he said, with a submission that was almost childlike from one so brilliant in achievement.

A single bell sounded through the stillness of the castle.

"It is for the evening service," said William. "Will you go?"

Tired and dusty as he was, the Count assented.

"And you?" he asked.

William put his papers carefully away under the Bible.

"In my mother's house I may honour my mother's faith," he said.

The two young men went down to the chapel together.

A few days after the return of Count Louis to Dillenburg, a notable company was gathered in the large council chamber. It was long since it had served for councils, having for many a day been put to lighter uses—for ball, feast, and family celebration.

There was no magnificence save only the magnificence of the high Gothic arches, and no splendour save only the splendour of the windows gorgeous with the lion and billets of Nassau in blue and yellow and the twisted lettering of the motto of the house: "Ce sera Nassau, moi, je maintaindrai."

A plain oak table, no longer polished, and worn to a tint like dark silver, occupied the centre of the room; a circle of high-backed chairs covered with fringed leather and fastened with tarnished gilt nails surrounded the table: the one near the window was distinguished by arms shaped like twisted dragons, and there sat William of Orange, with a pile of letters and papers in his hand.

His dark face, his dark habit were in shadow against the glowing light of the coloured glass; his head was bent a little, and with his long brown fingers he absently fluttered over the pages of the documents he held.

On one side of him sat Count John and Count Louis; on the other, Count Adolphus and Count Henry; while beyond the five brothers were Count van der Berg, Count Hoogstraaten, Count Culemburg, the Seigneur de Villars, and the Seigneur de Cocqueville, the French Huguenots.

All these gentlemen were young in years and grave in deportment, being indeed weighted with matters of life and death. Two of the Nassau Counts, Adolphus and Henry, were little more than boys, the younger being but eighteen; his bright locks, his eager ardent look, the charm of his early morning years, made him a pleasant picture as he gazed intently at the Prince, to whom he bore so distinct and touching a likeness.

The details of the intended raid on the Netherlands were being discussed.

In a quiet voice William had read out the sums at their disposal.

Fifty thousand crowns from the great cities of the Netherlands and the refugees in England, fifty thousand crowns from the Prince himself, ten thousand from Louis, thirty thousand from Hoogstraaten, thirty thousand each from Culemburg and Van der Berg, ten thousand by a secret messenger from the Dowager Countess Hoorne, the desperate mother of those two doomed men, Hoorne and Montigny, who lay, one in a Spanish, one in a Flemish prison, ignorant of each other's fate.

In addition to this, William placed on the table a list of all his jewels, furniture, plate, dogs, falcons, pictures, and precious apparel, such as robes trimmed with valuable furs, laces, and costly velvets embroidered with jewels.

Count John too announced that he had pledged his estates to raise a large sum of ready money, and the Huguenot gentlemen offered both men and gold.

"We can give nothing but our swords," said Henry of Nassau, looking half vexed, half smiling at Adolphus, who added softly, "and our lives."

William heard the words; he glanced quickly at his two younger brothers, and slightly winced. From the first moment when he had resolved to undertake this tremendous struggle it had not been the treasure that he had thought of, but the noble lives that might be sacrificed. Before this dark venture on which he was engaging was over, the House of Nassau might be stripped of all its sons as leaves are stripped from a tree and blown uselessly down the wind; and as for those gathered round him now, how many might fall, even in the first shock of battle?

As for himself, he had staked everything he possessed; on the thick sheets of paper on the table before him stood named all his property. The sale of this would leave him a poor, nay, almost a beggared man.

Yet even with all these sacrifices the total sum raised was barely sufficient for one campaign, since they had to pay mercenaries and support them in a country already desolate and mastered by foreign troops.

"And it is Alva who is against us," said William; his eyes gleamed as he spoke the great captain's name, and his voice vibrated with excitement.

"And behind Alva all the treasure of Spain," added Culemburg, glancing at the list of their own poor resources.

"That," said the Prince quickly, "is not so tremendous—the treasure of Spain. It will take all the gold of America to govern the Netherlands as Alva means to govern them—to maintain an army in a country ruined, barren—the trade lost, the wealthy fled. Alva is a poor financier, and he will not obtain much aid from Philip, who looks to see gold pouring from the Netherlands—not into them. To exhaust Alva's resources is but a question of time."

"But we?" asked Louis. "Can we wait? If this first attempt fails, can we go on?"

"We can go on till we die," answered William. "There is nothing to stop us but the failure of ourselves. There are plenty of men and plenty of money in the world—many who hate Spain and who love the Reformed Faith. We do not venture in a little cause nor a foolish one."

Louis looked at his brother.

"For me, I shall not fail, save only by my death," he said.

"I do believe it," said William warmly, "and think the same true of all here present. Seigneurs, for yourselves you can answer—your cause, your faith, your country; for the House of Nassau I can speak." He glanced at his four brothers. "We shall not hesitate nor turn back nor lay down our arms until these Provinces of His Majesty be released from the desolation of the Spaniards and the abomination of the Inquisition, or till death free us from our task."

He did not speak vaingloriously or boastfully, nor with any arrogance or pride, but almost sadly; and on those present, who knew how long he had deliberated, how strenuously he had striven to bring the Government to reason and moderation, how loath he had been to take up arms against Philip, this solemn declaration of his irrevocable decision had a weighty effect.

They knew that he dedicated himself, his brothers, and all the possessions of his famous house to this cause, not with the reckless enthusiasm of the adventurer nor with the hot-headed daring of one who had nothing to lose, but with the serene strength of one who had been regally great, who had owned everything the world can offer, and who had quietly laid down all rather than become an accomplice of senseless tyranny.

He waited for no comments on his words, but selecting a rough map of the Netherlands from the papers before him, laid it on the table, where the bright glow of the window flushed it gold, and indicated with his finger the routes to be taken by the attacking forces, which were to be divided into three, under Louis, De Villars, and De Cocqueville, while he himself was to wait at Cleves with a fourth contingent to follow up success or cover defeat.

"De Cocqueville by Artois with the Huguenots and refugees—two or three thousand men," said the Prince, glancing at the Frenchman, who smiled and nodded. "Hoogstraaten with De Villars, through Juliers on Maestricht; Louis on Friesland, on the west—all should be in the field by May."

He leant back in his chair and folded up his papers.

"All these expeditions will be desperate adventures," he added abruptly. "You, gentlemen, will be taking raw troops and mercenaries against the finest veterans in the world—yet men have been victorious before with bad tools and a good cause."

"I do not think of failure," answered Louis, with that eager gaiety that showed so charmingly in him; for he was no ignorant stripling, but a brilliant, experienced soldier. William looked at him in silence; it was in his mind that they must think of failure, and meet it, often.

But now was not the moment for doubt and discouragement, and the native cheerfulness of the Prince made it easy for him to assume a calm and hopeful front.

With a half-laugh he handed to Louis, Culemburg, and Van der Berg their several commissions for raising men and levying war against Philip and his men—"to prevent the desolation overhanging the country by the ferocity of the Spaniards, to maintain the privileges sworn to by His Majesty and his predecessors, to prevent the extirpation of all religion by the Edicts, and to save the sons and daughters of the land from abject slavery, we have requested our dearly loved brother, Louis of Nassau, to issue as many troops as he shall think needful." So, still preserving the fiction of loyalty, did William defy Philip in terms of courteous submission to His Majesty; so he, as sovereign Prince of Orange, owning no lord, exercised his right to levy troops and declare war.

He had already refused haughtily the jurisdiction of Alva's Council of Troubles and proclaimed that he was only answerable to his peers, the Chapter of the Knights of the Golden Fleece and to the Emperor; and now he put himself even more definitely on the side of Philip's enemies. His expression was almost amused as he gave the three Counts the formal copies of their commission; his quick mind looked forward and saw that spare, pale figure wandering round the half-built Escorial, and his rage when he learnt that the one grandee of the Netherlands who had escaped his far-flung net was likely to strike a blow that would revenge all the others.

The council broke up.

As the gentlemen left the apartment the Seigneur de Villars asked Count Louis, what news from the Provinces?

"The last news—a week old—is but the same story," replied Louis: "murder, massacre, confiscation. It is believed that the Duchess will retire to Parma, leaving Alva absolute master, as he is indeed now. Culemburg's palace on the horse market has been confiscated——"

"As a revenge for the conspiracy that was plotted there," added Hoogstraaten, with a smile—"the Mass on Parma's wedding day, the banquet of the 'beggars'! Culemburg has paid dear for a sermon and a dinner."

"Brederode has paid dearer," said Culemburg.

"He is dead, is he not, your great 'beggar'?" asked De Cocqueville.

"At Castle Handeberg," answered the Nassau Count, a little sadly. "He fell into a melancholy, and drank himself to death; so his great shouting and fury ended in nothing—like a huge wind flowing aimlessly and suddenly dropping. Alas, he would have served us well now. I am sorry that his gaiety and his courage are overlaid with dust for ever."

"It is strange to think that Brederode is silent at last," remarked Van der Berg—"he who talked and laughed so well."

The western light of evening filled the old, plain but pleasant castle as the Nassau Princes and their guests went down to the chapel, where the preacher had already entered for the evening service.

This chapel, once gorgeous with the beautiful pomp of the ancient faith, was now entirely bare of all ornament.

Plain glass filled the windows which had once glowed with regal colours; the ordinary light of day now entered and lit all the aisles and arches which had once been obscured with mysterious gloom; a coat of whitewash obliterated the paintings on walls and pillars and ceiling; plain rows of benches took the place of carved prie-Dieu and tasselled cushions.

The pulpit was of simple wood, the seat of the Nassau family directly facing it; in each place a Bible and a Prayer Book with a broad green marker were laid.

Green curtains on brass rods screened off the upper portion of the arches, and green boughs waved against the clear windows; the white interior of the church was all coloured with this green reflection, which was extraordinarily cool, quiet, and peaceful.

When William and his companions entered the chapel it was already nearly full, most of the household being in their places.

In the Nassau pew sat the Countess of Nassau, Juliana of Stolberg, her three daughters—Magdalena, Juliana, and Catherine, the wife of Van der Berg.

Near them were their women. Anne had not come, being literally ill with rage at her husband's decision to sell his property; but RÉnÈe le Meung was there. She glanced continually at the four Nassau women, so handsome, so modest, so fine with their simple attire and princely carriage; she saw that the Countess of Nassau was pale, and guessed the reason: of all who were sacrificing to the Protestant cause and the rescue of the Netherlands, no one was giving what this lady was—four splendid sons to war and peril, a fifth to possible ruin, all her own possessions, the husband of her favourite daughter—the wealth and security of her house, and all her kinsmen.

When William and his brothers entered and took their places in the pew before her, she lifted her eyes from her Bible and gazed at them with unspeakable yearning and unspeakable triumph.

This was an offering worthy to put before the Lord, these were men fit to be dedicated to His service: the noble, magnificent William, the pride of his name, and famous in Europe; the handsome Louis, gallant, pious, intelligent, and brave; the chivalrous Adolphus in his healthy young manhood; Henry, the graceful youth already promising all the splendours of his race; John, resolute, loyal, capable, who had laid down all he possessed at the service of his brother,—their mother's gaze travelled from one to the other of them as they sat before her, and her heart contracted and her lips trembled as she wondered when she would see them all together again—as she wondered how many would return to her, how many would fall in the struggle on which they were now entering.

She did not complain, even in her inmost heart; the touch of sternness that was inevitable with a sincere belief in her austere creed strengthened her and enabled her to be glad and proud that they were all united in a cause she considered sacred.

She was prepared to let them all go, to lose them, if God willed, one after the other, and neither to murmur nor lament.

Yet how she cared, how she suffered in the midst of her pride and triumph, the pain that shook her as she watched them, so young, so brilliant, so pleasant, none present guessed save perhaps RÉnÈe le Meung, whose senses were acute with love.

The Countess knew for what reason the council had been held to-day: she knew that in a while now all would scatter to try the desperate chances of a desperate war, and not by one word would she have striven to hold them back; but as the quiet service continued, as the green glow of the trees was changed to the westering flood of red over those five martial figures who had once been children on her knee, Juliana of Stolberg breathed a prayer for them that was a prayer of agony.

When the service was over, she lingered a little in the white chapel, now filling with the dusk; her limbs trembled and her eyes were misty. Her daughters stayed with her, all sad for their brothers, Catherine too for her husband.

Each woman thought of the long vista of anxious days before them—days of waiting, days of news perhaps worse than waiting; days when they would remember, with such poignant pain, this present time of peace.

They slowly left the chapel, RÉnÈe behind them, unnoticed in the shadow.

In the antechamber William waited for his mother.

Her dark eyes smiled at him, she put out her hand and touched his shoulder.

"When do you start?" she asked.

"In a week or so—we should be all in the field by May."

"All? So soon?" She said no more, and she still smiled.

But RÉnÈe, the other woman who loved William, understood, with a dreadful sympathy, what was being endured by the Countess's brave heart.

By the end of April Louis of Nassau and his army of refugees, adventurers, and mercenaries had entered Friesland; at Appingadam he was joined by Adolphus in command of a troop of horse, and the two brothers advanced on Groningen, which town refused to receive the rebels but gave them a sum of money on condition that they renounced an attack on the city.

With this much-needed treasure Louis was enabled to keep together his troops and enrol more of the fugitives who daily flocked to his banner, while he retained his headquarters at Appingadam, strengthening his forces and waiting for news of the enemy.

Early in May, Aremberg, Stadtholder of Friesland, came in sight of Louis' entrenchments; there was a sharp skirmish and Aremberg fell back on Wittewerum Abbey, where he encamped, waiting for the arrival of Count Meghem, Stadtholder of Guelders, who was coming up through Coeverden with reinforcements of infantry and light horse.

Louis was aware that Alva's two lieutenants were only waiting to join forces to attack him, even if Aremberg did not fall on him alone; he knew too that the troops coming against him were four thousand of Alva's best men, including Braccamonte's famous Sardinian regiments, and he was keenly conscious of the wretched rabble his own troops showed in consequence; they were mostly untrained, mostly in poor condition, and had only been kept from a mutiny by the money of the city of Groningen and Louis' acts and promises.

William's brother had started on this enterprise with a recklessness that was not impudence but heroism; he was a good general and a fine soldier, and well knew how desperate was his adventure with such materials, but he had not hesitated, for to wait for more money and better men would have been to wait for ever.

Learning that Meghem had not yet arrived at Aremberg's camp, he shifted his own position, marched three leagues through a little forest of fir trees, and entrenched himself near the monastery of Heiliger Lee.

There he was joined by a messenger disguised as a priest who brought him news from Maestricht.

It was completely disastrous; illness had prevented Hoogstraaten from taking his appointed command, and the Seigneur de Villars had led the forces which were to attack Juliers, raise the country, and secure Maestricht. These objects had failed. Two Spanish generals, De Lodrovo and D'Avila, had attacked and defeated him at Dalem; all the invading force of three thousand men had been put to the sword, and De Villars himself sent to Brussels for execution.

So ended one of the three attempts on the Netherlands. Louis crushed the dispatch (which had been sent by one of the Prince's secret agents in Maestricht) into his doublet, and said not a word of its contents to any, even to Adolphus.

That evening they dined in the convent of Heiliger Lee from which the monks had fled at their approach; the abbot had joined Aremberg at Wittewerum.

The building was pleasantly situated on a slightly rising ground which behind sloped up to a wood of short poplars and beech; to the left was a large plain divided, for agricultural purposes, into squares by means of ditches or canals; before it and to the right was a vast stretch of swampy ground which, though covered with lush green grass, and in part transformed into pasture land, was, at this season of the year, impassable; a stone causeway leading to the convent crossed this deceitful morass, which was bordered by a road winding round the wood and hill—the road by which Aremberg must arrive if he made an attack.

Louis' position was as good as was possible to find in a country so dangerous by reason of ditches and swamps, the shoulder of the hill protected some of the troops, and the remainder occupied the only piece of dry ground in the vicinity; the morass stretched before their encampment as a natural defence; the heights, too, of Heiliger Lee (artificially created by early monks) were the only rising portions of ground in the whole flat district which was girdled and swamped by the overflowing waters of the Em and the Lippe. The ground was historic; as the two brothers wandered in the convent gardens before the dinner hour, they reminded each other of their school learning, when they had read of Hermann, that early Goth who, on the very swamp at which they now gazed, had turned back the victorious legions of Rome.

And now again the Germanic people were gathered to resist Latin tyranny and to oppose proud assumption of universal dominion by the assertion of man's eternal right to freedom of person and of conscience.

It was a fair evening, and the scene before the two young generals was beautiful with the languid, mellow, golden beauty of the Low Countries. The swamps, covered with grass of a most brilliant green hue, melted to a wistful horizon straight as the line of the sea and misted with gold which faded into the soft azure of the heavens; the woods were of the same hues, a sharp, bright, delicate green and gold, dull and glowing like the tint of honey.

The road and the stone causeway were warm with the dusky golden shadow of evening; the convent buildings also were warm and mellow in tone; the low-walled gardens before the doors were filled with homely flowers—pinks, stocks, and wallflowers.

Louis leant his elbows on the wall and looked across the low sweet prospect. His eye travelled to the plain where his ill-equipped forces were encamped; he watched the men moving about among the tents preparing their food, and thought of those four thousand beaten out of existence at Dalem, and of the Seigneur de Villars waiting to be sent to the scaffold.

Louis remembered him in that last Council at Dillenburg, how he had asked about Brederode, and lamented for his death—he whose own days were so numbered!

The Nassau Count's face hardened; who would next pay toll to the Spanish fury?

Adolphus spoke, scattering his brother's thoughts.

"If they try to cross the swamp, we have them," he said keenly, surveying the verdant treacherous ground.

"Aremberg is Stadtholder here, he must know the country," replied Louis; "if it were a Spanish commander I should have different and better hopes."

"I have good hopes," said Adolphus. He was to-night a little quieter, graver than usual; his fair and youthful face wore an expression of serenity and resolution Louis had not seen there before, but he had never been with his brother on the eve of battle.

Louis was glad he had not spoken of the news from Juliers.

"Aremberg will have good hopes too," he answered lightly. "He despises us and the 'beggars' bitterly enough. Strange how in the old days at Brussels we rode and ate together—we and Meghem, and now come to this!"

"Aremberg is a sick man," said Adolphus. "They say he can hardly sit his horse. I would rather die young than grow to be sick."

A white pigeon and a white butterfly took flight together from the convent wall and flew side by side across the swamp until they were lost in the melting mists of the distance.

Adolphus pointed to them.

"Like two souls departing," he said, putting back the thick lock of hair the evening breeze blew across his eyes. "Do you remember the skryer who foretold our fortunes at Leipsic?" he added.

"Yes," said Louis, with a little smile.

"He is in the camp. He followed us from Groningen, and asked me leave to join us. He was with Brederode, he said, even to his death, then wandered in our track from Germany. Do you think he can really read portents in the stars?"

The young Protestant general answered slowly—

"It does not seem to me that God would permit His heavens to show forth signs for mummers to profit by; yet these fellows have a grain of truth in their predictions—though maybe of the Devil; did not this man say in Leipsic we should all die a bloody death? And who among us then thought of war?"

"He told me yesterday," said Adolphus, "that for three nights there had been a falling star above Groningen, and that Aremberg's hours were counted."

"God's will be done," said Louis soberly; he gave another glance at his camp and then they turned into the convent where their simple meal was ready.

They were about to rise from the table when an officer brought into their presence a young peasant, a tall blond Frieslander, who told them that he had been running all day before Aremberg's army to warn them of the enemy's approach.

"The Stadtholder is coming straight on you," he said simply. "He has with him many foreign soldiers and the six cannon of Groningen."

"We," said Louis, "shall be ready to meet him."

Rising, he looked into the eyes, so blue and placid, of the young giant who had given him this valuable warning.

"Can you handle a matchlock or hold a pike?" he asked.

"Either, in the service of Your Excellency," answered the man quickly. "Anything to give a blow to the Spaniards. I have strong hands," and he held them out.

Louis smiled, to check a sigh.

"We are none of us great soldiers," he said, "but we may be great fighters if God wills."

He took the silver "beggar medal" from his neck and gave it to the Frieslander, bidding the officer who had brought him to enroll him in some company which was not full strength.

The young general and his brother then threw their mantles about them and, descending the hill, went on foot among the encampment, exhorting and encouraging the men (who now were enthusiastic enough), and disposing the troops.

The motley army was arranged in two battalions on the plain where they had encamped, each squadron flanked by musketeers and one protected by the base of the hill on the brow of which was placed some light-armed troops, at once the decoy and the shield of the main army.

The most dangerous position was assigned to the cavalry; this, under the command of Adolphus, was in the vanguard of all, directly facing the wood-bordered road along which the Spaniards would approach.

When all arrangements were complete and all the officers had received their instructions at the hastily called field council, the brothers returned up the hill.

The stars were now beginning to fade in the light of a pallid dawn, the woods were hushed, the fields serene; the bodies of men moving about to take up their positions were indistinct black masses in the obscurity.

Louis felt his blood beat strongly; he was about to strike the first blow in the cause to which his House was now pledged; tremendous results, moral and material, hung on the issue of to-morrow's battle, and there was almost everything against him.

When he went to change into his complete armour he fell on his knees on the bare floor of the convent room and prayed—

"God, as we fight not for our own profit nor glory but for thy poor people, forgive us all our loves and our hates, our lusts and all our mistreadings, and let those who fall to-morrow die in thy mercy."

When he had armed he dismissed his pages and went down to where Adolphus already waited in the convent garden.

The young Count wore a suit of black mail with a little scarlet plume like a burst of flame in his casque, and across his heart a scarf of that orange colour, so bright and deep, that it was frequently mistaken for the scarlet sash of the Spanish officers.

Louis' harness was of uncoloured steel; he too wore the orange scarf, the tasselled ends of which fell to his thigh.

Among the fragrant flower-beds two grooms held the two black horses of the brothers.

The light had now strengthened so that they could distinguish the pikemen from the musketeers on the plain below, and discern the sutlers hastening to the rear with the baggage waggons.

Adolphus glanced at the banners which were being displayed in the still air, all of them glittering with gold and silk which traced, he knew, patriotic and bold inscriptions; then he watched with interest his own banner being brought up the hill by a galloping horseman.

Louis was straining his eyes down the darkling road where Aremberg was almost due.

"He will wait for Meghem, who cannot be a day's march behind," he said anxiously; "when he sees how we are entrenched he will skirmish and wait."

"God be entreated," said Adolphus, "that he attacks us."

They mounted, and were scarcely in the saddle before news came from the outposts that Aremberg was in sight.

The banner of Adolphus now waved at the head of his little troop of horsemen (not more than three hundred) who waited on the hill to take up their position.

Adolphus still looked at this banner; the morning breeze caught the folds and blew them out, showing the arms of Nassau with the mark of cadency of the fourth son and the words, "Je Maintiendrai," together with the inscription which was the motto of Louis' army, "Nunc aut nunquam, recuperare aut mori."

The brothers now, by a common instinct, turned to each other and clasped hands.

The two fine young faces, so alike in feature and expression in the stern frame of the open casque, gazed at each other with a wistful and silent affection.

Their hands loosened and they moved away, when suddenly Adolphus turned back, and, dropping the reins, threw his right arm round Louis' neck with a womanly gesture and kissed him; then at a gallop he swept away, put himself at the head of his little troop, and led them down the hill to their desperate and perilous position.

Aremberg and his men came in sight of the "beggars," opened fire on the light troops on the hill from the Groningen cannon, then paused.

Louis of Nassau, waiting at the head of the main body of his army, felt his heart sink.

He discerned that the Stadtholder had noticed that to carry the rebels' position he must needs cross the swamp, and that he preferred to skirmish and wait for Meghem with reinforcements.

An hour of the bright morning passed heavily by; then, to the intense relief of Louis, Aremberg again opened fire.

The impatient Spanish officers had reproached the Netherlander for his slowness and caution; they had no wish to share glory and spoils with Meghem's men; they believed that the "beggars" would fly at sight of them; they even taunted Aremberg. Braccamonte, the general of the Sardinian troops, dared to suggest that the Stadtholder, like his rebellious countrymen, was at heart a heretic.

Aremberg, broken by illness, stung and inflamed by the Southern insolence, gave orders for an immediate attack—orders that were against his own knowledge and experience and against the trend of all Alva's advice.

So the guns of the city of Groningen again opened fire, and their sound was music in the ears of the rebel commander, and the acrid smell of the powder, sweeter than the fresh perfume of the flowers opening to the early morning in the convent garden.

The light force which had received the fire now fled from their position.

Louis smiled, keenly watching the enemy.

Again there was a pause in the royal ranks; again Aremberg suggested a stratagem and the dangerous nature of the ground.

But the Spanish officers were now beyond control.

Seeing the flight of the troops on the hillside (a flight that was, as Aremberg suspected, a snare), they believed the whole rabble of the "beggars" were in a rout before them, and rushed forward to attack and disperse the two squadrons of the main army.

As they dashed from the road and the wood, brandishing their swords and shouting to each other, man after man plunged into the morass, the treacherous grass gave way beneath them, while the deep pools left by the peat gatherers sucked in others to their necks.

In a few moments the entire advance guard of the Spaniards was entangled, helpless, and perishing in the swamp.

Louis now ordered up his musketeers, who opened a quick fire on the struggling enemy and drove them back again into the marsh.

Meanwhile, Braccamonte was bringing up his rearguard to the rescue. Louis, perceiving this, sent his concealed battalions round the base of the hill to cut off the Spanish.

Braccamonte, finding himself ambushed, and fresh contingents of the Netherlanders pouring in on his ranks, utterly lost his courage.

Shouting confused orders to his troop he turned and fled.

His men, surprised, left without a leader, were instantly driven back by the "beggars" and fell in helter-skelter confusion on to those already entrapped in the morass.

The battle field was now one red carnage; the verdant fields of grass were broken into trampled slime that disfigured the gay armour of the dead and dying Sardinian soldiers, whose dark faces were twisted into an expression of wrath and amazement.

The stagnant peat pools glowed horrid with blood, the once pure air smelt foul with smoke, the soft sounds of bird and insect were changed for broken curses, shouts of despair, and gasped prayers.

The proud, insolent, and arrogant troops of Spain knew themselves completely scattered and beaten by the rebels at whom they had so jeered and laughed.

Louis, gathering together the remainder of his men, dashed forward with weapons and banners uplifted, and fell upon the bewildered fugitives.

Aremberg had watched the troops, who had refused to listen to his orders, go to their steady defeat; when Braccamonte, riding hard for safety, dashed past him, a bitter smile curled his pale lip.

"Save yourself!" shouted the Spaniard.

But the Netherlander, at whose courage the Southerns had mocked, never left his post.

He saw perfectly that the day was lost; his men were being cut to pieces before his eyes, his officers had fled; under his own command he had only a few horsemen.

Turning his gaze from the bloody mÊlÉe where Louis was driving before him the boasted Sardinian regiments, Aremberg looked to the road, which was barred by Adolphus and his horsemen who still presented unbroken ranks though they had received the first shock of the artillery.

The few officers left in attendance on the Stadtholder urged his immediate flight along the road he had just traversed.

"How shall I account for this day's work to Alva?" answered the Netherlander sternly.

Rising in his stirrups he called to his men to follow him, and hurled himself on the young Nassau.

The two leaders singled each other out; they had last met in the tennis court at the Nassau palace in Brussels.

They smiled at each other, and both fired; Aremberg received the ball in his side, but fired again, then struck with his sword at the flame-like plume on the black casque.

It dipped and fell backwards; at the same moment a rush of "beggar" cavalry drove the Stadtholder before them.

He looked round, and perceived that all his men had fled save a few attendants; he had been shot twice through the side, his disease bowed him to the saddle with pain, the weight of his armour was almost intolerable; he cast away his helmet whose protection he despised, and retreated slowly, keeping his face to the enemy.

A musket ball struck his horse, which fell under him; two attendants picked him up and dragged the animal to its feet.

It staggered a few paces, then fell dead.

A second time Aremberg got to his feet; two rebel troopers approached him, he shot both, and continued to limp along the stone causeway on which the fresh blood was drying in the May sun.

He saw a large body of the enemy coming passionately behind him, and dragged himself painfully off the road on to a little meadow that sloped to the wood.

There he stood at bay leaning his back against a little fir tree that could hardly support his weight, and wiping, with the ragged ends of his sash, the cold sweat from his brow and the blood from his sword.

The enemy soon discovered him—there was half a regiment of them—he gathered all his strength to straighten his body that he might meet them standing.

Another shot struck him, he fell on his knees, still wielding his sword—one against many; one officer cried out to spare him, for it was the Stadtholder, but even as he spoke Aremberg fell, shot through the throat, sinking on his own sword which broke and fell beneath him.

They picked him up and wrapped him in a cloak, and carried him through the morass filled with his dead soldiers to the victorious Louis of Nassau.

That young general was flushed with hope; he had seen the veteran troops of Spain go down before the onslaught of the "beggars" and the Nassau arms wave above the field of victory.

The sun was only just beginning to slant in the heavens, and there was not one of all the boastful hosts of that morning to fire a shot or raise a sword for Spain.

When the dead general was laid at his feet, Louis uncovered.

"He should have been spared," he said, in a moved voice.

They lifted up the mantle and Louis looked down at the fiery Stadtholder now mangled with shot and sword.

"He was too good to be Alva's pawn," he said. "Such bravery went ill with such a cause."

He ordered the body to be carried up to the convent, and sent a messenger to his brother; he was himself turning up the hill when the clear challenge of advancing trumpets came across the wood.

"Meghem!" cried Louis, and hastened back to the head of his troop.

It was in truth the Stadtholder of Gueldres; Louis hastily called off the pursuers and, in the fear of another attack, drew back his entire force on to the dry ground.

But Count Meghem was alone; his troops had been too exhausted to push on; he, however, with a small bodyguard, had hurried from Zaidlaren where he had found a letter from Aremberg bidding him hasten.

Before he reached the encampment of the "beggars" the stream of fugitives told him of disaster; from some flying Sardinians he learnt of Aremberg's utter defeat and death.

Wild with fury he pushed recklessly on, until he was able to discern with his own eyes the distant swamp where had been engulfed the veterans of Spain, then turning his horse's head he pressed back to Zaidlaren and ordered his men to fall back and secure Groningen, in which city he sat down to write the news to Alva.

Louis, secure that there would be no further attack, now occupied himself in seeing to the troops and ordering the disposition of the wounded, who were not numerous, though more than a thousand of the enemy had been slain.

It was the hour of sunset when he returned to the convent; he expected there to find his brother, for whom he had repeatedly asked, but whom he had not seen since the battle.

He believed that Adolphus must have gone in pursuit of Braccamonte's flying battalions. With a sigh of fatigue he took off his casque and gloves and called for water and for his page to unbuckle his armour.

"Where is the Count Adolphus?" he asked again, looking round him.

The officers who filled the chamber were silent; then one of them drew Louis to the door of an inner room which had been a monk's cell.

This little apartment was flooded with light which poured through the dancing green branches of the fruit trees without and was musical with the evening song of birds.

The only furniture was a chair, a table, and a bed.

On the chair was a splendid stained sword, on the table a black casque with a flame-like plume, and on the bed something wrapped in the banner with the Nassau device which had waved that morning at the head of Adolphus' little troop of horse.

Louis could read quite plainly the words, "Nunc aut nunquam, recuperare aut mori,"—they were slightly sprinkled with blood.

And at the bottom of the bed the banner lifted, showing the soles of two mailed feet.

For a moment Louis felt his courage and strength leave him; he leant against the door-lintel as weak as a sick girl.

Then, "He is dead," he said; "why was I not told?" and with a firm step he approached the bed, and turned back the silk fold of the banner.

The young man lay with his head turned towards the wall. Aremberg's sword, cutting through steel and leather, had cloven the fair curls and the youthful forehead an inch deep; the reverently placed linen bandage was crimson with blood, and the long locks were clotted and tangled; the lips were strained into what seemed a stern smile, and the head had fallen so that the chin was raised haughtily. The orange scarf was pierced by a bullet that had entered under the edge of the cuirass, above this wound the young warrior's fine hands had been crossed.

Louis gazed long and earnestly, recalling every word of the youth's speech last night, every gesture, recalling his last embrace that morning—and the victory, bought with this dear blood, became as nothing to Louis of Nassau.

The first toll had been paid; very early in the fight had it been exacted; with the first crossing of swords a Nassau had laid down his life.

Louis bowed his head as he replaced the banner fold over the dead features, and his eyes swelled and burnt with tears.

Two of Adolphus' officers came softly forward now, gathering courage to speak.

"It was the Stadtholder slew His Excellency—they came together through all their troop—the Count fell, very valiantly wounded, at the first onslaught—his two esquires were shot by Count Aremberg also."

"We brought him here," added the other, "not to disturb your lordship with grief until the fight was over."

Louis did not answer; he stood heavily, looking at the straight outline beneath the banner and thinking of the gallant figure who had kissed him that morning before the battle, and of the Prince at Cleves and the women at Dillenburg waiting for news, to whom would come this news—this and the news from Juliers which Adolphus had never known.

Barren and small seemed his victory to Louis, and heavy and mysterious the ways of God.

He left the little chamber, closing the door gently as if he feared to disturb his brother's solemn sleep, and went out into the still garden, now flushed rosy from the setting sun.

There against the wall leant a miserable figure, DuprÈs the skryer.

He glanced furtively and fearfully at Louis, yet with a pleading look like a dog waiting to be called.

Louis started at sight of him.

"Ah, you!" he exclaimed; "one of your prophecies has been fulfilled!"

DuprÈs abased himself before the young general.

"I knew," he said humbly. "But, seigneur, I never told him—I saw one star fall for Count Aremberg and one for him—but he knew without my words."

"Yes, I think he knew," replied Louis; he looked keenly at the half-starved, ragged figure of the refugee. "And when shall I join him, wise fellow?"

DuprÈs crouched away.

"The contest will outlast all the warriors," he muttered, "and your horoscope is more dreadful than his—but how do I know? I cannot read the heavens as I could!"

"There is no need to look in the heavens for my portents," said Louis, as if speaking to himself, "they are blazed abroad before the eyes of men very clearly."

The golden dusk faded and darkness closed over Heiliger Lee, soft clouds passed over the setting sun which pierced them with level rays like spears; the dead men in the morass were hidden, the moving light of lanterns crossed and recrossed the victorious camp.

A mist, white and trembling, rose from the swamp and obscured the roadway; the young trees in the forest, shivered and faded to a dark hue against the last pearly glow of the west.

The birds were silent in the fruit garden, and all the flowers were closed away and hidden in the night.

Count Aremberg lay lonely with a crucifix on his breast and his cloak folded straight; but throughout the night Louis kept company with his brother, kneeling on the boards beside his bed and wetting the blood-stained banner with his tears, while the heads of the two young warriors, still so alike, rested for the last time on the same pillow, touched, for the last time, cheek to cheek and lip to lip.

The news of the dear-bought victory of Heiliger Lee was late in coming to Dillenburg; it was soon followed by the tale of the complete rout and loss of the third party of the invaders, who had invaded Artois under the Seigneur de Cocqueville. He and his entire force had been cut down at St. ValÉry, and the survivors of the defeat had been instantly hanged.

From Brussels, too, came other news, as disastrous as sad. Alva's wrath had found a swift vent; the impudence of the "master beggars," as Meghem had called them, who had dared to defeat Alva's veteran troops and slay his general, was cruelly revenged on those in Alva's power who were suspected of sympathy with the rebels.

The members of the House of Nassau and their adherents were banished on pain of death, and their property confiscated.

On the ruins of the Culemburg Palace, which he had burnt to the ground, was erected a pillar commemorating the hatching and overthrow of the "beggar" conspiracy which had begun at the famous banquet held between their walls; and before this desolated spot, eighteen nobles and gentlemen were publicly executed, their heads and bodies afterwards being fastened to stakes and left to moulder on the horse market.

And a few days later Egmont and Hoorne were brought to Brussels, and Alva filled in the blank death-warrants signed by Philip and brought from Spain, with the names of two of the most illustrious men in the Netherlands and the most obstinately loyal to Spain of all those Netherland nobles who had hated Granvelle and served Philip.

And on the sixth day of June the most awful blow yet struck at the Netherlands fell, and Lamoral Egmont, Prince of Gravern, Stadtholder of Flanders, victor of St. Quentin and Gravelines, and Philip Montmorency, Count Hoorne and High Admiral, both councillors of the Netherlands and Knights of the Golden Fleece, were publicly executed in the great square at Brussels.

The whole country shuddered to the heart, and the hatred of Alva grew to a passion and a fury.

There came other news to Dillenburg, to agonize Count John and the waiting women there—news of more obscure victims. A lady and her servant who two years before had struck an image of the Virgin with a slipper were drowned by the hangman in a hogshead on the scaffold; a Lutheran who had died in prison was dragged to the place of execution and beheaded with his companions; people were arrested by the tens, the fifties, the hundreds, and put to death without trial.

Flight was no longer possible, as the ports were closed against heretics; trade was at a standstill, commerce at an end; all industries were destroyed, agriculture ruined; the rich properties had been all confiscated or plundered by Noircarmes, Meghem, and their followers.

The great nobles had perished or were in exile, and the nation lay stunned and bleeding before her slaughterers.

In every town, in every village, new scaffolds were built, new fires lit; in every field and orchard the festering bodies hung; on every high road wandered destitute, half-crazed survivors, homeless and bereaved.

The death-bell was now the only music in a land once given to merriment, and the only dancing that of the dead swinging and shaking in their chains on gibbets, stakes, and trees; the great squares of the great cities, once worn smooth by the passing of thousands of busy feet, were now covered with rank grass and weeds, which were only disturbed by the tramp of the soldiery or the feeble steps of some half-starving wretches creeping into hiding.

Only the churches remained wealthy amid the poverty, only the priests and the Spaniards remained gorged and fat among the miserable and ruined; for while Netherland blood watered Netherland earth, Netherland gold streamed into Spanish pockets.

So had the Duke of Alva redeemed his boast that he would "tame these men of butter." So with the sword, the fire, the rope, the axe, he strove to uproot and destroy the seed Martin Luther had planted too deep for any man's uprooting and destroying.

The messenger who brought the news of the Artois disaster to Count John, and also dispatches from William, who was holding his position as well as was possible, was Francis Junius, the young minister who had preached in the now destroyed Culemburg palace on Parma's wedding day.

This man, who was absolutely without fear (on one occasion he had preached in a room lit by the flames of fellow-heretics perishing at the stake without), had been in Brussels, and had actually mingled with the crowd that had been a horrified witness of the death of Hoorne and Egmont.

Then, after wandering through the desolate country and administering such comfort as he was able to the persecuted people, he had joined William at Cleves and, by him, been sent to Dillenburg.

When Junius had left Count John, Juliana of Stolberg sent for him.

He found her in a quiet room of the castle with her three daughters, Anne of Saxony, the Countess of Hoogstraaten, and several of her women.

The chamber was hung with worsted tapestry in sombre and faded hues; against this background the group of women, all in the dull black of mourning, with black caps on their fair hair and white ruffs surrounding their fair faces, made a startling picture. She in the deepest mourning of all was Hoogstraaten's wife; her dress was dull, without a touch even of white, for the Countess Hoogstraaten was the sister of Count Hoorne. She was seated next the Countess van der Berg, and the two were embroidering a child's dress with white and black thread.

The Princess of Orange, pale and haggard in the bitter black robes, played with a little white dog that lay on her knee; RÉnÈe, also in mourning, sat on a low stool beside her mistress.

Francis Junius was also in a plain black gown a little worn and rusty, and a linen band without lace.

He was not discomposed by the presence of all these great ladies, but saluted them with the civil calm that was his habitual manner.

The Countess of Nassau rose and received him with a sweet courtesy.

"You come from my son," she said, as she set him a chair with her own hands, "from the Prince of Orange? If you are not fatigued, I would hear some news of him."

The slim young minister sat gravely facing the semicircle of ladies; his worn and hollow face bore traces of disease and anxiety, but was animated with ardour and enthusiasm.

"The Prince is very well, gracious Madame, and bore most valiantly the grievous news. He is engaged in raising fresh levies for another attempt on the Netherlands. He sends these letters to your princely self and to Her Highness his wife."

With movements as precise as his words he delivered the letters to the ladies. The Countess slipped hers into the bosom of her dress; the Princess's letter remained on her lap, on the back of the little dog.

Francis Junius kept a reserved silence, as if waiting his dismissal, while the young women whose husbands and brothers were fighting in the cause he preached gazed at him with wide eyes of sympathy and awe.

But Juliana of Stolberg wished to hear more of that country where now all her interests were so passionately centred.

"Tell us," she said, with a sad, gentle earnestness, "of the Netherlands."

The preacher flushed and started from his abstraction.

"Of the Netherlands?" he repeated. "Alas, I have seen nothing in the Netherlands you or any lady would care to hear."

"Do you think we are so weak-hearted?" smiled the Countess, pointing to the mourning of all. "What we have endured and what we must endure, our thoughts and our anxieties, serve to steel us."

Her lips trembled and she put out her hand to clasp the sympathetic hand of her daughter Catherine, which crept on to her knee.

"Did you see my son Adolphus before he died?" she asked in a firmer voice.

"No, Madame—but I have heard of the great honour he had in his death. And I heard that the Count Louis was doing very wonderfully and resolutely with his little means."

"He had always a high, hopeful heart," replied the Countess, "and a very gallant way of cheerfulness. God grant that it be not overthrown nor dimmed."

"The House of Nassau," said the preacher, "is greatly blessed by all the poor people of these unhappy provinces—in that noble name alone," he added, with reverence, "they place their hopes."

"My sons can do much, not everything," answered Juliana of Stolberg. "The people too are valiant and patient, and fearful of God—give credit to the people and to such men as yourself, sir."

"I?" he exclaimed, in genuine astonishment. "I am as helpless before Alva as a straw before the wind!"

Hoogstraaten's wife spoke; her voice was grave, in tone like that of the Admiral, her brother.

"But you have been in great peril, there is a price on your head, and yet you stayed?"

"Ah, that, yes," he admitted simply, as if these things were a matter of course.

"Why did you stay?" asked Catherine van der Berg earnestly.

"It was the land where I was sent to labour, Madame, and perhaps I have been some use—to comfort one on his way to martyrdom, to console the bereaved, to utter a prayer over an unconsecrated grave, to encourage the soldiers of Prince William."

His expression became sad and thoughtful, and he bent his head as if it was heavy.

"It is all one can do," he added wistfully.

"It is enough," said Juliana of Stolberg. "God has guided your steps that you have come safely through such dangers."

Junius did not reply; he knew that he was doomed sooner or later to the torture and the stake, for he did not falter from his determination to continue his simple and heroic ministrations in the Netherlands.

"You saw the executions in Brussels?" asked Lenore Hoogstraaten in a low tone. "You saw Count Egmont die? And the Admiral?"

"Yes," replied the minister. "He died bravely in his mistaken faith and his mistaken loyalty."

Countess van der Berg had known the brilliant Egmont in the old glorious days, and she asked with a fearful curiosity after the last moments of that unfortunate grandee, looking tearfully the while at Hoorne's sad sister.

Junius answered in a low voice, quietly giving his impressions of that last scene as he had witnessed it from the crowd. He was not greatly moved by what he recited; his fiery, single-minded piety had never had anything but contempt for such as Egmont, and he had seen more horrible things by far than the death of that nobleman.

"He came walking very composedly. The scaffold was covered with black cloth, with two black velvet cushions. There were Spanish soldiers round, three thousand of them. I think there were great fears of a rescue. It was hot weather, and the Count came about midday, when the sun was strong; he had asked, I heard, that he might die first. I was close enough to see him quite clearly. His hair was almost white, and he looked very tall; he wore a crimson velvet robe with a black velvet cape, and underneath one could see the badge of the Golden Fleece and his doublet cut away about the neck—by his own hand, I think.

"He made no speech, but walked up and down twisting a handkerchief in his hand. He seemed very passionate, and showed rage and despair, asking, I believe, to the very last if there was not to be a pardon.

"He disarranged himself and took off the badge of the Fleece, kissed the crucifix the Bishop of YprÈs gave him, and knelt.

"The Spanish captain gave a signal, and I saw the executioner spring out from under the scaffold cloth, and it was over very swiftly."

The women remained pale and silent, only Hoogstraaten's wife asked, "And Hoorne—my brother?"

"The Admiral was more unmoved. He was all in black, and conducted himself without passion save when he saw his escutcheon hanging reversed on the scaffold, when he protested hotly. He looked on the body of Egmont, then wished the crowd happiness, and begged them to pray for his soul—which I, for one, have done," added Junius simply. "He was not wept for like Count Egmont, but I think he was the better man."

"He lived, and died, gloomily," said the Countess Hoogstraaten. "He had no joy in wife or child. I wish I had been with him at the end."

"Even in his coffin he was lonely," answered Junius He lay in Ste Gudule, and no one went near him; but when Egmont was in St. Clara you could not move for the crowd weeping and praying. Yet, Madame,"—he turned to Hoorne's sister,—"the Admiral will always have the greater honour before God."

"And the Countess Egmont?" asked Juliana of Stolberg.

"She and her children were in the utmost poverty, for every thaler he possessed was confiscate. The day of the execution they were supperless, and fled to a convent. Alva, it was said," smiled the preacher, "recommended them to Philip's charity."

The Nassau ladies exchanged commiserating glances, but Anne looked coldly; the Countess of Egmont had always been an object of her dislike and envy.

"It is a good lesson to one who was ever over-proud," she remarked.

These harsh words, the first that she had uttered since Junius entered her presence, caused the preacher to look at her with a stern surprise.

"You think I am uncharitable?" commented Anne boldly, returning his gaze with all her bitter, rebellious discontent unveiled in her heavy eyes. "But I am one who has lost as much as Countess Egmont in this miserable 'beggar' war."

The Countess of Nassau gave her a look of austere reproach.

"Are you not ashamed to speak so, you who have a husband, a home, and friends, while she is an outcast exile? Are you not ashamed to speak so before the sister of Hoorne and Montigny?"

"My husband! My home! My friends!" muttered Anne, and she bent over the little dog, clutching it till it yelped, and William's letter fell to the ground.

RÉnÈe picked it up, the blood receding from her face as she touched the inscription he had written, the wax and cord he had sealed, and her mind pictured him in the midst of his pitiful little army, harassed with a thousand cares, penning this letter to an unworthy woman.

Juliana of Stolberg turned again to the young preacher.

"You will stay with us a while at Dillenburg," she said, "and, after all your labours, rest?"

He smiled at the idea that rest was any part of his life.

"Indeed I must return to the Netherlands," he answered. "I shall go back to meet the Prince at Strasburg, and afterwards to the Provinces."

"It is to step into hell's mouth," said the Prince's mother, "but it is so noble a resolve that I am ashamed to endeavour to dissuade you."

They talked a little longer about his work among the persecuted Netherlanders, and then he left them to prepare himself for the service he was to take that evening in the chapel.

When he had left a silence fell over the little group of black-clad women; only Anne, who was like a firebrand of discord in that peaceful household, was restless.

She threw the dog off her knee at last and limped fretfully about the room; with feverish fingers she tore open the Prince's letter, then cast it down.

The Countess noticed this and flushed.

"What have you read that displeases you?" she asked.

"What can I read that will please me?" flashed Anne. "What good news can come from a man ruined by his own folly?"

"You speak of my son," returned the Countess, trembling.

"I speak of the man who has reduced me to beggary," cried the Princess passionately. "And I will use my tongue as I list; it is you who do not use the respect you should—all of you—little nobles that you are, to the Elector Maurice's daughter."

The Countess rose.

"Had you been my daughter, you had been better bred," she said, "and learnt many a lesson at the rod's end. You may be finely born, but you are foully trained, or else you are mad, God pity you! If you were not my son's wife, I should have other things to say to you; since you are, I beg you to stay apart from me, for my soul is too troubled to support cursed humours."

Anne was silenced. The Countess, like William, could overawe her if she chose. The Princess shuddered with suppressed passion and, as always when defeated, hurried from the room.

The Countess seated herself, pale with distaste; such scenes as these, and worse, were but too common now. Anne had threatened Count John with a dinner-knife, and again and again wounded her attendants with any weapon she could lay her hands on; RÉnÈe bore a bruise on her forehead where the Princess had struck her with a wine-bottle.

"She is mad," said Magdalena, with the indignant frankness of youth. "She should be put away; indeed she should."

"I think she is mad," admitted RÉnÈe slowly and humbly. She had so completely assumed the burden of Anne's life that she felt as if Anne's faults were her own; she rose now to follow the Princess.

"Stay here, you poor child," said the Countess of Nassau tenderly.

RÉnÈe thanked her affectionately, but hastened after her mistress.

She dared not leave Anne alone; it was always before her, a constant terror, that Anne might escape to Cologne and utterly disgrace the Prince; and she felt intensely the responsibility of being the only one who knew how low Anne had descended, even in the days of her prosperity.

In that July, William moved to Strasburg, steadily and boldly preparing his advance against the Spaniards, his daring inroad into the Netherlands. He had now no allies save his brother Louis, who, in desperate want of money, with mutinous troops, was using all his brilliant audacity and resource to keep his men together in Friesland, where his barren victory of Heiliger Lee had been followed by no fruits save what little money he could wring from the Abbots of Wittewerum and Heiliger Lee and the forced supplies obtained from the inhabitants of the district.

And against this force of ill-disciplined, ill-fed, mutinous, and ill-equipped troops, held together by one man's courage and influence, Alva himself was marching with fifteen thousand of his veteran regiments.

William, pressing forward his own preparations, using all his eloquence, all his energy to raise new levies, to obtain money, hardly dared to think of Louis awaiting the approach of Alva in the marshes of Friesland.

He had heard of the entire failure of the two other expeditions he had so carefully and adroitly planned, the utter annihilation of the forces of De Cocqueville and De Villars, and he had received an even more cruel blow in the news of the death of Adolphus; but in his own task he did not hesitate for a moment in his strenuous preparations, nor in his unfaltering endeavours.

He had now every one against him save his own family and a few faithful friends, such as Hoogstraaten and Culemburg. The Emperor, at first favourable to his enterprise, was now drawing closer in an alliance with Spain, and ordered the Prince to abandon the cause of the Netherlands on pain of forfeiting all his Imperial privileges and dignities; and the German Princes, from whose alliance William had hoped so much, became daily colder and colder in the cause of the unhappy Provinces.

And it was a cause that might seem indeed hopeless; so mighty and terrible was Alva, so supine, so stifled, so exhausted, so crouching the wretched people he had crushed beneath his armed feet and bound and gagged with the chains and bits of the Holy Inquisition.

Since the executions of Egmont and Hoorne the heart of the country seemed to cease to beat. Nowhere was any resistance made; the tyranny was too extensive, the punishment too swift and universal.

The people, drained of blood and money, bowed to the new power, went to mass, and feebly tried to pick up the threads of their former occupations.

No one came forward to join Louis, and fewer and more timid became the promises sent to the Prince.

He continued, however, to plan his own expedition as if all had been so far successful instead of completely disastrous.

The continued campaign of Louis in Friesland was against his advice; he wished his brother to fall back on Cleves instead of awaiting Alva's coming.

He himself had brought his levies from Cleves to Strasburg, where he was nearer the central Provinces and able to retreat into French territory if need were. He had good hopes from the French Huguenots; he was still on friendly territory, though far from Dillenburg and from Louis, whose news reached him slowly, passing as it did from hand to hand by secret agents across a country cowering under the Spanish rule. He was also on the borders of the Palatinate, and the Elector Palatine was warmer in the cause of the Netherlands than the Princes of Hesse or Saxony; the Court of Heidelberg was indeed the sure refuge for any exiled Protestant, and the stern Calvinist Frederic was moved by neither fear of Philip's power nor tolerance towards his faith.

But his present encouragement to William was little more than good wishes, for to him too the Provinces seemed lost.

It was in late July, when William was almost ready to take the field, that a knight with a few attendants rode into Strasburg and demanded to see the Prince of Orange.

He had no difficulty in obtaining his wish, for the German officers recognized him as the Landgrave William, son of Philip of Hesse and cousin to Anne of Saxony.

He found William and Count Hoogstraaten together in an upper chamber of the modest house where they lodged.

It was a sultry night and the windows were wide open; between them sat the Prince at a plain table writing by the light of a little copper lamp.

He was writing to his wife, and the words he penned as the Landgrave entered were these:—

"I go to-morrow, but when I shall return or when I shall see you I cannot, on my honour, tell you with certainty. I have resolved to place myself in the hands of the Almighty that He may guide me where it is His good pleasure that I should go. I see well enough that I am destined to pass this life in misery and labour——"

As he heard the door open, he closed his letter hastily and put it away.

As he rose to greet the Landgrave his eyes shone; he had a moment's hope that Hesse was sending troops to his aid, or at least bringing promises of future assistance.

Count Hoogstraaten also wore an eager look as he saluted the German Prince.

But the appearance of the Landgrave was neither cheerful nor hopeful; he seated himself heavily, took off his black silk hat, and wiped his forehead.

"It is something important," said William quickly, "that has brought you from Hesse here to seek my poor company."

"I came myself," returned the Landgrave, "because my father could think of no better messenger. I have been at Dresden, and bear also the messages of the Elector Augustus."

"Ah!" said William softly.

He seated himself and glanced at Hoogstraaten.

The Landgrave was a man of blunt words and a stern courtesy; without preamble he came to what was the gist of his errand.

"Turn back—wait—leave the Provinces; it is impossible to assist them. No one can withstand Alva and his army."

This was the sum of what the Landgrave William had ridden rapidly from Hesse to say.

The argument was not new to William, already he had heard a great deal of such discouragement; but perhaps it had never before been put to him so weightily by so important a personage. He listened with his elbow on the desk and his chin in his hand, his firm, small-featured profile towards the speaker, his eyes cast down.

So plain was he, so modest were his appointments, that even the unimaginative mind of the Landgrave contrasted him with the gorgeous bridegroom who had come to Leipsic for his marriage seven years before.

"Have you not," he exclaimed, "sacrificed enough already? Are you not sufficiently stripped?"

"I am," answered William, "greatly hampered for want of money."

"How much have you on this enterprise?" asked the Landgrave.

"Everything," said the Prince, "all I and my brothers and my friends possess."

"Then you are ruined men!"

"If we fail, yes," admitted William.

"It is not possible that you can succeed."

"It is not possible to turn back," replied the Prince, not arrogantly but rather gently.

"You defy the Emperor?" demanded the Landgrave hotly.

"I have answered the Emperor—I have answered King Philip—I have explained myself to all Europe." He exerted himself to speak pleasantly, but behind the tolerance of his tone was a certain indignation.

The Landgrave was baffled and irritated.

"You are obstinate, Highness, but that will not save you. What do you hope to do?"

"To enter the Netherlands while Louis holds Alva in check in Friesland."

"And if you fail? Can you pay the troops? Have you a means of retreat?"

"I have not counted the cost so closely," replied William. "I hope that the great cities will open to me and that I shall not lack wherewith to pay my troops—if not, I can but pledge my word that these debts shall be redeemed when I can achieve the means."

"Do you ever hope to obtain your estates again?"

"I hope everything," said William, and he smiled with his unconquerable cheerfulness, which was like the cheerfulness of Louis, impervious to all attacks. Gloom, melancholy, and despondency were unknown to the House of Nassau. "And yet I expect nothing," he added. "I make neither boasts nor prophecies, Landgrave; I but take the instruments to my hand and do what I may with them."

"Your motive?" cried the other. "Is Your Highness ambitious or fanatic?"

The Prince replied rather wearily—

"I have proclaimed my motives again and again, Excellency. I have explained myself at every German Court, before England, before France—I fight Alva and the Spanish rule over the Netherlands."

"You fight King Philip," answered the Landgrave, "though you keep up a fiction of loyalty; and who do you think will unite with you against Spain, who is half the old world and all the new?"

William smiled again.

"Let him keep his new world and his old, I but want the Netherlands. Ah, Excellency," he added, "it is in your power to refuse me help and to turn your back on me—it is not in your power to discourage me nor hold me back."

The Landgrave rose impatiently with a rough gesture.

"You are madmen, you and your brothers, and will meet with the fate of madmen."

The Prince thought of Adolphus, and winced.

"It may well be," he said quietly; "believe that we counted that cost before we undertook our tasks."

"It is useless to speak any more!" exclaimed the Landgrave angrily.

"On this subject, yes."

The Prince rose and held out his hand affectionately. "You will stay with us to-night?" he added with courtesy.

The Landgrave refused.

"I go to my lodging; I will come to-morrow to see if you are in a better frame of mind, Highness."

He saluted both, and abruptly left; the Prince returned to his unfinished letter.

"It is a strange thing," said Count Hoogstraaten, "how many are ready to hold a man back, how few to push him forward! Always these councils of prudence, of caution, of non-resistance, of humility, and cringing!"

And the fiery little soldier went angrily to the window and stared fiercely out on the hot night; there was something lion-like in his slender heavy-shouldered figure, in his blunt-featured face, in his pose of noble anger as he gazed out on the darkness as if it concealed the numberless hosts of his foes.

The Prince finished his letter and joined his friend in the window-place.

"If we live we shall succeed," he said. "If we die as the others died—well, a worse thing might befall us. And what does submission ever gain? Better to fall like Adolphus than like—Egmont."

His voice saddened on his friend's name and his eyes too turned towards the darkness as if he also pictured there the swarming battalions of his mighty enemies.

"We have had our pleasant times, Hoogstraaten," he added; "our gay morning was fair and easy, and now we are men and must take the labour and heat of the day——"

He stopped abruptly; his quick ear had caught the sound of an opening door. It was the Seigneur de Louverwal who entered; he carried dispatches which had, he said, been forwarded to one Van Baren—an agent of the Prince in Brussels—and by him to Strasburg.

The letters were from Count Louis and the agent himself.

William's lips tightened, the blood receded from his dark cheek, and he caught his under lip with his teeth as he read his brother's letter.

It was written from a farmhouse on the German frontier, and announced the Count's pitiable and utter overthrow.

Out-manoeuvred by Alva, harassed by mutinous troops, lack of money, and provision, betrayed by his own fiery impatience, Louis had been driven to the village of Jemmingen on the Ems, and there his wretched forces had been wiped out by Alva's splendid army and Alva's cool skill.

Those who had escaped the battle were massacred; the blood of nearly ten thousand rebels had washed from Alva's laurels the stain left by the little victory of Heiliger Lee.

William read the letter over twice, then sank into a chair; he was never sanguine, but he had not been prepared for such a blow as this. He felt his head reel and his heart beat fast; the light of the little lamp grew dim before his eyes and the room dark. It was with an unsteady hand that he handed the letter to Hoogstraaten.

So the third of the armies he had got together with such infinite pains and toil and sacrifice had disappeared before Alva like chaff before a bright flame.

De Cocqueville in Artois, De Villars in Juliers, Louis at Jemmingen—all defeated, utterly, completely, for ever.

A passionate exclamation broke from Hoogstraaten as he and De Louverwal read the dispatch; it roused William, who took up the agent's letter and read it slowly.

This contained fuller details of the disaster brought by a Spanish soldier to Maestricht, where Van Baren had been.

He now wrote to the Prince that only a handful of the rebels had escaped, and that they, with Count Louis, had swum the Ems and fled into Germany. He wrote of the ghastly butchery which had followed the victory, how all the dikes and swamps were red, and the sky red also with burning crops and houses, for Alva had laid waste Friesland from end to end, sparing neither woman nor child.

And against this background of horrors stood out the desperate heroism of Louis who had dashed again and again among his reluctant troops, who had hurled himself single-handed on the enemy, who had, when the gunners had fled, fired his only artillery—the Groningen cannon, the poor spoils of Heiliger Lee—with his own hand, going from one to the other with the firebrand; and that desperate volley had been the last volley of the rebels.

When William read of his brother's piteous and splendid attempts to turn back the dark tides of disaster, when he read of the slaying and burning of his little army ("the dead were so thick they choked the river"), he rose with a movement of intolerable agony, and a sharp sound unconsciously escaped him—the cry of one swiftly and unexpectedly wounded.

"O Christ! O, Christ!" muttered Hoogstraaten, and he looked about him bewildered. "Who will give us levies now? How shall we do anything?"

De Louverwal turned his face away and wept.

The Prince still said nothing; he loosened his falling collar and wiped his face and neck bathed in cold sweat; he put his hand to his throat, and his lips parted as if he stifled; then he closed his mouth firmly and continued to pass the handkerchief over his face.

It was the same unconscious gesture of mental agony that Lamoral Egmont had used on the scaffold.

"Ah, Highness," cried Hoogstraaten—"ah, Highness, what news is this?" and his voice was hoarse with love and pity and wrath.

"Eh?" said the Prince faintly. "Eh?"

He turned to face his friend, and looked at him a moment almost blankly.

Then he spoke.

"We must go on—there is the more need that we go on."

"Is it possible?" broke from De Louverwal.

"Before God, it is very possible," answered William, and his voice was suddenly strong.

He had now recovered complete mastery of himself; he sat down and wrote a letter of consolation and encouragement to Louis.

The Duke of Alva marched back triumphantly from Groningen, celebrated the overthrow of Louis of Nassau with arrogant and hollow rejoicings in the overawed capital, tortured and beheaded several persons of distinction—including the brilliant and loyal Burgomaster of Antwerp, Anthony van Straaten—and offered up hundreds of lesser victims as thank-offerings on the altar of his success, and melted the famous Groningen cannon to cast a statue of himself.

Meanwhile William of Orange, by tireless exertions, indomitable patience, courage, and enthusiasm, and by superhuman straining of every nerve to raise the money, had assembled an army of thirty thousand men, and exercising his right as a sovereign Prince he declared war on the Duke of Alva, issued a proclamation of his motives to the Netherlands, and marched toward the frontier of Brabant, near Maestricht, where Alva was encamped.

He wished to hazard everything on one great battle where he might wipe out the disasters of Dalem, Artois, and Jemmingen, encourage his soldiers, and hearten the Netherlands.

But Alva would not give battle; his cold and cruel genius saw that his advantage lay in delay, that William had not the money to keep his army together long, and that the German mercenaries, unpaid and inactive, would soon mutiny and desert.

William saw this too, but it was impossible for him to entice the wily Spaniard into an engagement.

Meanwhile the main difficulty remained the money; every thaler the Nassau family could raise had gone on the three lost armies and on equipping the present one for the field. In his proclamation he had said with a touching courage and cheerfulness, "We have now an excellent army of cavalry, artillery, and infantry raised all at our own expense," but this 'excellent army' could not be kept together without pay or plunder, and the generous hand that had supplied them was now empty.

William appealed to the Netherlander whom he was coming to rescue, but the three previous defeats had disheartened utterly the miserable populace, and it was but a wretched sum that the Prince received; three hundred thousand crowns had been promised to his agent, Marcus Pery, and but ten thousand reached the camp. Applications to the gentlemen who had signed Brederode's famous Compromise brought no results; and wherever the Prince's army moved the people fell away from his line of march, not daring to lift a hand in his service.

Well might one of the devices which showed on his banners be that of a pelican in her piety feeding her young with her own blood, for it was from themselves alone the Nassau Princes received support.

When the Prince mustered his army in TrÊves, he had with him the dauntless Louis, the young Henry, and Hoogstraaten, and he was soon joined by Lumey, Count de la Marck, at the head of a ferocious band of followers. This nobleman, reckless, rough, and daring was a blood kinsman of Lamoral Egmont, and had joined William out of motives of personal hate and revenge against Alva.

At St. Feit the Prince crossed the Rhine, then by a bold and brilliant movement his army swam the Meuse (to Alva's incredulous rage), and marched into Brabant with all the pomp of war.

Nearly thirty times he changed his camp on the plains of Brabant, each time hoping to lure the Duke into an engagement; each time Alva, though for ever hanging on the skirts of the rebels, managed, with consummate skill, to refuse an action.

So passed the weary days of autumn; by the middle of October the Prince was at St. Trond, intending to effect a junction with a body of French Huguenots under De Genlis who were waiting at Waveren.

As always Alva was at the Prince's heels, skirmishing incessantly with the outposts, but always withdrawing his main army when William advanced for an engagement.

"This will end soon, one way or another," said the Prince. "Either we have a general action, or all is lost for this campaign."

He spoke in his tent at St. Trond to Louis and Hoogstraaten; outside were the camp noises and the slash of an autumn shower against the canvas.

Louis, almost ill with the irritation and fury of being constantly out-manoeuvred, of seeing the army slip from them while Alva quietly waited, half-crazed with the thought of his own powerlessness to avert the miserable failure of the campaign, made no answer, and Hoogstraaten could only gnash his teeth.

But William remained patient; perhaps he had not expected any more glorious results from this desperate venture.

Quietly he stated the position.

"It is impossible to pay the men another penny, or even to feed them much longer. I heard to-day that Alva has dismantled all the mills in this district. There will, of course, be a mutiny—it is quite impossible to keep them together beyond November, which they take as the beginning of the winter."

"There must be an action!" cried Louis passionately. "There must be, if I ride into Alva's camp and challenge him to his face!"

And the Count shook with rage at the thought of this army, got together with such infinite sacrifices, being miserably disbanded.

But his impatience did not help, William would have reminded him of the results of his fiery recklessness at Jemmingen.

"Alva will never be enticed into an action," said Hoogstraaten, "he is as cold as this!" and he struck the steel hilt of his sword. "He is not Aremberg to be fired by his officers into an imprudence; he is a great general, though a cruel animal. God curse him."

"I salute his generalship," said William, with a bitter smile. "I admit he has defeated my hopes. One victory—one doubtful victory—and every city in the Netherlands would have opened to me, all over the country the people would have risen, for he rules by terror only. Now no one dares move—all silent, trembling—and I helpless," he added, with sudden passion, "my God, helpless!"

The exclamation was like a passionate prayer. William, young, ardent, full of courage and energy, felt that word "helpless" the most terrible of all.

But he instantly recovered himself with that mental strength that made all things possible to him.

"I must meet De Genlis, his reinforcements may be strong, he may have brought money," he said, then added with his unfailing thoughtful generosity, "Besides he has made his way through the Ardennes to meet me, and I cannot fail him."

"Alva might attack as we cross the Geta," said Louis hopefully.

"It is possible—it might be done," answered the Prince.

"He is too cautious," said Hoogstraaten; "nothing will tempt him."

William rose, went to the entrance of the tent, and lifted the flap that concealed the October night.

The rain was now over and the moon had risen large and yellow, showing the encampment and the motionless lines of the ruined windmill that crowned the high hill opposite. Behind this hill flowed the Geta on the opposite bank of which Count de Genlis waited for William.

Beyond, where the dark clouds lay heavy on the horizon, was Alva, like a crouching beast, following his prey cautiously and waiting for it to fall exhausted ere he sprang.

The Prince's face hardened as he gazed at the ominous darkness faintly sprinkled with the Spanish camp fires; he thought of Egmont and Hoorne, Brederode, and Berghen—of Adolphus, and his own stolen son, his own insulted name, his own confiscated property; and against Philip and Philip's red right hand—the hard old man crouching there with his talons deep in the flesh of the Netherlands—his whole soul went out in wrath and defiance and a hatred that was like a sensation of triumph and pleasure.

"Well, old man," he thought passionately, "I am loved here as you are hated—and some day that will tell."

He was joined by Hoogstraaten and Count Louis; all three were almost without hope; all were living, and had long been living, a life of hardship, privation, and peril; all of them faced a prospect of either violent death or utter beggary and exile, yet their mutual youth, courage, and energy communicated to each other, together with the sense of love and comradeship, made them almost joyful.

They began discussing plans for the crossing of the Geta to-morrow.

A force was to be stationed on the hill, which rose now blackly against the moonlit sky, to protect the crossing of the main body of the troops, while the rearguard under Hoogstraaten was to remain on the bank in a desperate attempt to lure Alva.

In case this was successful and the Spaniard advanced his main army, William and Louis were to recross the Geta and engage.

The plan was desperate, and William could hardly place much reliance on it, but Hoogstraaten was exultant at the chance of coming to grips with the enemy.

Louis felt some vexation that the command of the rearguard had not been given to him; the truth was William relied more on Hoogstraaten's coolness than Louis' audacity in this perilous and delicate position.

"You have Jemmingen against me!" said Louis, with a laugh, and he pulled at his orange sash with strong impatient fingers.

"Confess, Count," cried Hoogstraaten gaily, "that your retreat then was unnecessary and that Alva does not deserve to be so feared! Here we have been several days in the Netherlands and we have seen nothing of the Spaniards but their backs!"

"And when you see their faces," replied Louis, vexed, "I warrant you will remember it for the rest of your life."

Hoogstraaten caught his arm and begged his forgiveness for the rough jest.

"Ah, jest while you can," said Louis, instantly smiling again.

"A light heart never hurt any cause," said William.

He dropped the tent flap and called his page; bidding the boy give him his sword, his mantle, and his hat, and to have his horse brought, he prepared to make a tour of his forces and see all was in readiness for the morrow.

The Count Louis and Hoogstraaten departed on the same business to their several commands; first all three embraced warmly, and, in case they should not meet again before the bustle and confusion of the morning, William gave Hoogstraaten some parting words of encouragement.

Despite their terrible anxieties and the agonizing difficulties of their position, the three commanders were now cheerful, almost gay.

The night was beautiful, warm, lit by the mellow light of the harvest moon and fragrant with the smell of the earth recently moistened by the rain.

The Prince's men, as if encouraged by the decisive action promised for the morrow, were also quiet and seemed cheerful; a few days before there had been a fierce mutiny, when the Prince's sword had been shot from his side, but now all was tranquil, and William was loyally received as he went on his rounds.

Some of the refugee Netherlander were gathered together in an open space between the tents listening to the words of a Calvinist minister; little groups of others, scattered here and there, sang psalms softly to themselves.

The German mercenaries were engaged in mending their clothes, in cooking their supper, or in playing dice.

The keen smell of coarse hot soup, the strong scent of the picketed horses mingled on the fresh air; the light of the lanterns at the tent entrances and the small fires feebly rising after the shower shone on pots and pans, pieces of polished or rusty armour, bundles of kindling sticks covered with autumn leaves, and baskets of apples and pears, golden-red.

Here and there the windows of the little farmhouses and cottages where the officers were quartered glowed with a bright light.

William, riding with his little band of officers from one battalion to another, dreamt of a victory, of turning back Alva's troops, of breaking his prestige, of a whole country throwing off with groans of relief the loathed Spanish chains and welcoming her deliverers.

He had no grounds for such dreams but the sense of life and strength in his own body, in the fine horse beneath him, in the exaltation he received in gazing at the noble cloudy spaces of the sky, and the great moon that had shone on so many battles, and in the dark outlines of the hills and horizons of the hidden country.

Nor was he disheartened by the sight of the surgeon with his mule and cases going from tent to tent, nor by that of a cartful of dead men whose limbs fell limp as rags and whose bodies were defaced with gunshot; near these victims of a little skirmish was a tent of men, ill of a malarious fever, the sharp delirious voices of some came out on to the night.

The Prince continued on horseback till the dawn, when he returned to his tent to arm, and the army moved into battle array.

The sun rose strong and clear though with the mellow radiance of the Low Countries and the autumn; all that had been obscured by the dead light of the moon was now distinct: the scars and rags of the soldiers, the brilliant scarves of the officers, the disorder and dirt of the camp, the broken sails of the tall thatched windmill, the dried autumn grass on the little hill, the low waters of the Geta sparkling a sluggish gold.

Still all seemed hopeful, cheerful, full of presages of good fortune.

Birds were singing in the trees growing in the farm gardens, a few poppies and daisies blew on the hillsides, the sun was warm as summer but the air fresh with the coolness of the turn of the year.

William rode with his troops to the banks of the Geta, and sent them across in good order and safety, battalion after battalion.

The Spanish, whose outposts were near enough to observe these movements, made no sign of action.

Meanwhile, Hoogstraaten remained behind on the bank with three thousand men, while the Seigneur de Louverwal and a detachment of cavalry occupied the hill.

Steadily and successfully the Prince's army forded the river, regiment after regiment passing undisturbed, the infantry on the cruppers of the horsemen or wading at their stirrups. Again and again William glanced at the little hill where the patriotic banners of Hoogstraaten waved.

About noon the Spanish attacked.

Don Frederic, the Prior of St. John, brought up seven thousand troops and threw himself against the Netherlanders.

All was obscured in the lilac-coloured smoke of cannon and musket shot with flames; William could no longer see his banners nor the gallant lines of Hoogstraaten's men.

The Spanish did not cross the river, as the three leaders had so desperately hoped, nor could William return, as the further bank was now lined by Alva's cannon.

No news came from the fierce conflict surging to and fro by the waters of the Geta, but towards evening the foul smoke cleared, and the Spanish flag was visible floating from the shot-riddled windmill.

A little later a few soldiers escaped across the river, bringing to the Prince news that the entire rearguard had been cut to pieces, that Louverwal was a prisoner, and that the survivors of the awful day were now being massacred by Don Frederic's men.

Another miserable handful brought with them Hoogstraaten, unconscious, fastened to his horse by the reins, and with a shattered foot.

AU that night the moonlight was dimmed by the fires that burnt along the Geta.

These flames came from the farmhouses where Hoogstraaten's men had taken a despairing refuge. Don Frederic had at once ordered these buildings to be set alight, and those maddened wretches who hurled themselves from the flames found themselves impaled on the spears of the Spanish waiting without.

The nobler spirits put an end to their own lives to escape the taunts of their enemies; all alike disappeared in the same funeral pyres, the high-mounting flames of which illuminated the fierce faces of the victorious army and the stately figure of the militant priest who commanded them, and cast a red glow of blood and fire on those two triumphant symbols—the arms of the King of Spain, the cross of the Romish Church.

A few days after this fourth disaster the Prince joined the Huguenots at Waveren.

These allies, late as they were, might have proved of some material assistance, for they consisted of three thousand foot and three hundred horse—all eager Protestants, not hired mercenaries, but as soon as he rode into the French camp the Prince saw that he was face to face with another disappointment.

The little force of Count de Genlis was so hampered with women and children, aged folk and infirm, that it was likely to prove rather a burden than a relief to the over-taxed resources of the Prince.

The Huguenots indeed rather seemed a band of refugees escaping from destruction themselves than an army marching to the rescue of persecuted brethren.

Even De Genlis, the high-spirited and gallant French commander, could not advise William to try another engagement in the Netherlands, though they were within a few leagues of Brussels and of Louraine.

And William was as helpless as if his hands and feet were tied. He could neither pay his men, nor feed them; every day some deserted. Alva's masterly tactics had succeeded; the Prince's army was dispersing without having accomplished anything but the ruin of their commander, for William was personally pledged for the payment of the troops, and he had neither property nor credit with which to redeem his word.

He had staked heavily and lost heavily, and now stood stripped and beggared before the world.

In his camp at Waveren he faced his position which he saw clearly for all his cheerfulness; he admitted that Alva had out-generaled him, but not in that was his bitterest disappointment, but in the silence of the Netherlands.

He had believed that the people would rise to welcome him; he had hoped that some cities would open their gates to him, he had been confident that the nobles and merchants would assist him with money.

He had not sufficiently reckoned on the strength of terror which Alva had inspired, nor on the awful condition of the unfortunate Netherlanders.

He who had always been used to princely dealings, to use generosity and lavishness to all, was now bitterly humiliated and galled by his inability to redeem his solemn promise; and that to him was the bitterest part of his universal failure. Alva's triumph, the disappointment of his friends, his own lost prestige, and disgrace, his own personal beggary—these things did not move him as did the thought of the weary mutinous soldiers whom he could not pay, nor, as far as he could see, would be ever able to pay.

Winter was approaching, the land was as barren, the weather as chill, as the prospects of William of Orange.

As he sat in his tent this late October evening he felt the cold wind creep under the canvas and penetrate his mantle so that he shivered. His camp furniture was in some disorder, and half the large tent was curtained off by a handsome purple hanging.

Behind this lay Count Hoogstraaten. William had ordered him to be removed into his own tent, because neither he nor any man would long have the company of Hoogstraaten now.

The surgeon came from this inner apartment and said the Count slept.

William's eyes looked a question.

"When he wakes?" said the surgeon. "I fear, Your Highness, that when he wakes it will be but a waking to death."

He bowed and took his leave; he had many cases in the camp.

The Prince turned his gaze towards the purple curtains and leant back heavily in his chair. It seemed as if all his friends, all who loved him, trusted him, served him, were to be taken from him, involved in the common misfortune he had brought on them.

It seemed ironical, a needless cruelty, that the brave, generous, and gay Hoogstraaten should die.

His wound had been caused by the chance discharge of his own pistol, and at first had not seemed dangerous, but he had sunk into weakness and fever, a sickness perhaps as much of a despairing mind as of a wounded body, and now he lay slipping into death.

It had been an added torture to William to listen to the sick man's delirium—all on the theme of the dissolving army, the fruitless campaign, the liabilities of the commanders, the useless slaughter on the Geta, for which the poor Count held himself responsible.

"Supplies, supplies, if we could but get supplies, if we could but keep the men together!" had been the burden of the dying soldier's delirium, and William passionately wished that some good news might come if only to allow Hoogstraaten to die in peace.

But no good news did come; rather was misfortune heaped on misfortune.

The Prince held now in his hand letters from Dillenburg received a few days ago; Count John wrote with the gallant Nassau cheerfulness, but could not disguise that he sent evil tidings.

Anne of Saxony had seized the moment of her husband's ruin to forsake him; despite the letters of the Prince, the expostulations of her German kinsfolk and the Nassau women, Anne had flung herself free of all loyalty, and broken the bonds which had so long been hateful. She had written to Alva, throwing herself on his mercy and declaring she was a widow in the eyes of the law, as her husband was a prescribed exile with no civil rights, and entreating the Duke to return her her dowry out of William's confiscated property.

Then, abandoning her daughter and her baby son, she had fled from Dillenburg to Cologne and there set up a household of her own, surrounded by the exiles and refugees that crowded the city.

The news had not much power to hurt William's heart, his wife had been so long, even from the first, indifferent to him, and he could despise her disloyalty; but it was another blow to his pride, his dignity, the completion of his ruin, another cause for his enemies to laugh at him. "Madame your wife," had always been one of the objects of Granvelle's keen sneers, and the Cardinal, watching events from Rome, would sneer indeed now, as he would sneer at the army so painfully collected, so miserably dispersed, at the Prince who had defied the King of Spain and been beaten from his country's frontiers, a beggared exile.

It was not in William's nature to feel wrathful towards the woman who had so struck him, his sentiment now was a vast indifference, as if she had never existed, or only existed as some shadow from whom he was at last for ever free.

As he sat there in a loneliness only peopled by bitter and sad reflections and the spectres of ruin, failure, and despair, two of the officers attached to his person entered the tent.

The Prince looked up sharply, as if bracing himself to hear further disaster.

But the officers came with news of trifling importance: A fellow, evidently a Netherlander, had made his way into the camp last night and had entreated most earnestly for an audience of the Prince, and had gone from one officer to another with such importunate eagerness, that at length they had been moved to prefer his request to the General himself.

William had always been easy of access in the days of his prosperity, and it was not in him to surround himself with state in this time of his misfortune and overthrow.

He smiled faintly, drawing his brows together as he did when perplexed or amused.

"Let him come here," he said.

One of the officers suggested that perhaps the fellow was one of Alva's spies or assassins.

"Oh, that!" exclaimed William wearily.

Death was the least of the terrors with which he had to contend; he knew that probably Alva schemed to murder him, and it left him as indifferent as did the thought of Anne's treachery.

As soon as the officers left him he retired so completely into his own thoughts again that he forgot the incident, and it was with a slight start that he looked up to see a stranger, escorted by two soldiers, standing before the tent entrance.

This man stood very humbly bowing, as if too overcome by some emotion to speak, and William, interested in him, bade him enter, and dismissed the soldiers.

The stranger was of middle life with the appearance of humble birth and poor means; his clothes, though exquisitely neat, were shabby and thin; his features were pinched with cold, and maybe privation.

He stood crushing his hat to his breast and gazing at the Prince with an expression of utter confusion and awe.

William addressed him in Flemish, kindly asking him his errand.

The other continued to gaze at him with that look of wonder and reverence that was embarrassed but not at all stupid, rather a kind of amaze, as if he could not credit that this slim young man, with the pale dark face, wrapped in the plain blue mantle could be the great Prince of Orange.

"It is His Highness?" he asked timidly.

"I am William of Orange," answered the Prince, and as he spoke he felt that it was the name of the most unfortunate of men.

As the man seemed to need further encouragement, William added, "It was he you wished to see?"

"I have come all the way from Holland to see Your Highness," was the simple reply.

"From Holland? Alone?"

"Yes, Your Highness. It is a long way, and the Duke of Alva's army was often in my way—otherwise I would have been with Your Highness sooner," he added, in a tone of deprecating apology.

The Prince looked keenly at the quiet-looking individual who had undertaken with such simplicity a journey which meant risking his life a thousand times.

"Who are you, my friend?" he asked gently.

The man raised his eyes which under this gaze he had kept abased, and William was instantly conscious of a resolute and fearless spirit looking out of the plain insignificant face.

"I am an Anabaptist preacher, Your Highness; I have a little congregation of poor outcasts in Holland—we mostly live in hiding, and meet secretly to worship. There are not so many of us as there were, for the persecutions have been very fierce and we are quite defenceless.

"A little while ago a gentleman of Haarlem smuggled into the town a copy of Your Highness's most noble proclamation, and it came into my hands.

"That day I knelt to bless God for having raised up such a Prince, and when my poor people met together again I read them the joyful news, and told them that Your Highness appealed for money to support your army, whereat we, with a good heart, put together what we could, and as I was the only one who had no one dependent on me and knew the country well, I was elected to carry this small offering to Your Highness."

The Prince was too overwhelmed to speak; his quick mind, his warm heart, pictured the whole incident: The hunted outcast Protestants reading his paper, their eager gratitude and hopes, the secret putting together of what they could pinch from their poverty, the setting forth of the pastor, the perils and anxieties of his journey with his precious burden, his self-denial and hardship rather than touch his treasure, the modest unconsciousness with which he made his little speech—all this William saw vividly.

"Your Highness in your paper speaks of repayment," continued the Anabaptist, "but we require no payment, only kindness when Your Highness shall be triumphant."

Cautiously he took from the wallet at his side a small canvas bag, and, gazing at it with a look of relief and a touch of pride, laid it on the little table beside the Prince.

With a movement almost mechanical William untied the strings and looked at the contents.

There were about a hundred crowns in gold and some silver—this last what the pastor had saved on his journey by sleeping in ditches and almost starving.

"It is very little," said the Anabaptist nervously, oppressed by the silence of the Prince; "the will is better than the gift."

William remained motionless, staring at the pitiful little bag of money which represented such a spirit of sacrifice, such an enthusiasm still existent in the country he had deemed supine and crushed.

"I thank you," he faltered, "indeed—I—thank you——" A hundred crowns! and one month's wage of his army was some hundreds of thousands of crowns. A hundred crowns! A few years ago he had flung away as much on a pair of gauntlets—a dog—a toy; the smallness of the gift moved the Prince almost beyond bearing. He held out his hand towards the Anabaptist, and he, who had endured the loss of his brother, his friends, his wife, his army, his fortune, with fortitude, now broke down before this humble sympathy.

Putting his other hand before his eyes, he wept.

"Your Highness will receive more," stammered the pastor. "There are other Protestant congregations who are collecting for you—even if the big towns do not open, you have entered the hearts of the Netherlanders."

The Prince's shoulders heaved; he raised his face, flushed and quivering with tears.

"I thank you," he repeated, in a firm voice. "I thank you from my heart—you see me weak, but you must not notice it—I have not slept well of late. I will give you my receipt for this money and you must thank your people for me, and tell them I will repay them as soon as I can repay any of my debts—and for yourself take this, in remembrance of me," he drew from his finger a little yellow intaglio seal ring—one of the few personal jewels left him—and put it on the thin finger of the Anabaptist who bent before him in speechless gratitude and pleasure.

Promising to see him again before his departure, the Prince was sending away the preacher in the custody of his page, that the poor traveller might enjoy the best hospitality the camp could afford, when the Anabaptist turned and asked with a timid earnestness, "Are the faith of Your Highness and that faith you come to protect, the same?"

"My faith?" repeated William.

"Forgive me, but it is not commonly known if you follow the true religion."

"I follow what I believe to be true," said the Prince. "Otherwise I could not go on. For the rest, I am no Romanist." He paused a moment, then added with a little smile, "If any of your people ask after me, tell them that I too am an outcast and an exile—that I, too, am a heretic. Say, too, that I am not discouraged, that if I fail now I shall endeavour to try again. Ask them to be courageous and to give me their prayers."

When he was alone again he lifted the curtains and went to Count Hoogstraaten's bedside.

The gallant little soldier lay propped on pillows and covered with rugs; the dim light of a shaded lamp fell on the bold young face which, in the last few days, had changed so terribly, and over which the shadow of death now rested.

He was tossing in a restless sleep; William went on his knees beside him and put his cool hand on the hot forehead dewed with beads of pain and exhaustion.

The Count lay quiet awhile, then opened his eyes; he recognized the Prince immediately, and at once his dry lips began to murmur the words that were the expression of the mental agony that was killing him—

"Any news? Any supplies? Any money raised? Any means of keeping the men together?"

William firmly clasped the feverish hand that lay outside the coverlet.

"Help has come," he answered; "but now I have left a man who brought me supplies from Holland—and there are other promises of assistance."

A light came into the dying man's eyes. His tense body relaxed with a shiver of relief.

"Then—then you will be able to carry on the campaign?" he said faintly.

"With God's help I shall go on," answered the Prince gravely.

"Supplies, you say—from Holland?" murmured Hoogstraaten.

"Just brought into the camp—in gold," said William, "and, as I said, there are other promises; many, many are willing to help us—the country begins to move in our favour."

The Count closed his eyes and was silent, but his face relaxed into a look of content, and William blessed the hundred crowns of the Anabaptist that had served to soothe the bitterness of failure and death for his friend.

For a while they remained thus, the Prince kneeling and holding the tired right hand that had been unfailing in his service, the Count with his face pressed to the pillow and his eyes closed.

William thought of the tumultuous days in Antwerp when Hoogstraaten, and he only, had stood faithfully and bravely by his side—thought of all the long, loyal, sincere friendship that went back to the old gay times of feast and joust, hawking and hunting—the times when neither Anthony de Lalaing nor he had ever dreamt of such an hour as this. He thought, too, of the Countess at Dillenburg—waiting—already in mourning for one brother dead, and one doomed to die—waiting for the news—the news which would be that of a third bereavement; he thought of Anne at Cologne, cringing before Alva, and wondered if she would not be glad if her husband, that great heretic and rebel, was dead too.

Towards midnight the sick man spoke again, recommending his poor wife—he said twice, with a great sigh, "My poor wife!"—to the Prince, and begging him help, should occasion offer, his child, for the Count was beggared in the cause for which he died, and the Montmorencys, his wife's people, were more than beggared.

"Not to be a burden to you," he insisted in his weak, hoarse voice, "but—what you can—if Hoorne had been here——"

William promised, and the Count carried the Prince's hand to his heart and held it there.

He was now so clearly failing that Louis and other officers came to say farewell; he was still a Romanist, but there was no priest in the camp. A Lutheran minister brought him what comfort he could.

"It is no matter," said Hoogstraaten, who was now past formulas. "God must judge of me—into Thy hands—into Thy hands——"

Before the dawn he died, and the party he had espoused was the poorer for his loss, and the Prince a lonelier man.

"I am glad you have the supplies," were his last words, spoken so low that none but William, who held his head on his breast, could hear. "I am glad that gold came from Holland."

William, too, was glad for many reasons.

The castle of Dillenburg was now a house of mourning, the Countess of Hoogstraaten now wore black also; all the women went softly, talking in whispers, and shuddering when a messenger rode into the courtyard.

Count John was desperately employed in raising money for the Prince; a further mortgage was put on such lands as they still could control, further portions of the Prince's possessions—those few he had retained for himself were sold; his chapel furniture was melted to obtain the gold and silver it contained, he had himself sold by auction all his camp equipment—even his horses, his weapons, his armour—leaving himself with one mount, one sword, one suit of mail like any poor trooper.

He had sent orders that his remaining household should be dismissed. Some had gone with Anne to Cologne; others, scenting ruin, had already dispersed; the remainder left, now returning to their homes or seeking other employment. The Prince, who had been the most richly attended of any man in the Netherlands, had now not one servant; and he, the splendour of whose garments had been one of the glories of the capital, now wrote to his brother to send him "Two more pair of hose—the mended silk ones in my cabinet and those under repair at the tailor"; he who had always been regally magnificent in his gifts, now besought John to "find a good grey horse, which might be paid for by one of the silver ornaments still remaining in my cabinet, or a piece of the chapel service," with which to reward one of his faithful agents.

He had tried to persuade his troops to take service with the French Huguenots, but they had refused, and demanded to be led back to Germany; he was accordingly at Strasburg, where he disbanded this army on which so many gallant hopes had been set, and which had ruined him so utterly.

The gloom deepened over Dillenburg, even John, usually so resolute and cheerful, appeared sombre; he too was almost ruined; his fortune and his children's heritage had largely vanished in this fruitless and fatal campaign; he saw himself burdened with debts and liabilities which it was scarcely possible he could ever repay.

The women cried in secret, but were outwardly serene, and Juliana of Stolberg wrote encouraging letters to the Prince and to Louis, and her dreads and terrors only showed for an instant in the words with which she besought them to have a care of Henry and not needlessly risk his young life.

In this household RÉnÈe le Meung still lingered, supported by the kindness of the Countess of Nassau and her daughters in what was the blackest period of her sad life.

In the flight of Anne she saw her own failure, the collapse of her own long years of patient labour—all had been useless. Anne had fulfilled her destiny, and the waiting-woman was left without occupation and without any object in life—behind her the wasted barren years, before her a hopeless future.

She was as bankrupt as the Prince and as lonely.

It was clear she could not remain at Dillenburg; she was but a burden and an encumbrance in a household beginning to be run with the strictest economy. Anne had fiercely refused to take her to Cologne, nor did RÉnÈe wish to go, for her influence over the Princess had ceased and Anne was openly defying her husband and her kinsfolk. She was living at Cologne surrounded by any rabble she could find to sympathize with her, and she had put her legal affairs—her frantic attempts to recover her property, and her wild expedients to raise money—into the hands of Jan Rubens, the Brussels' lawyer.

RÉnÈe sickened to think of this; her whole spirit was crushed by the misfortunes which had overwhelmed not only her country and her faith but all she cared for, and the little world in which she had moved and served.

There was no further occupation for her at Dillenburg; William's children were in charge of his mother and sisters and of the Landgravine Elisabeth, Count John's wife.

The Court of the Elector Palatine—that refuge of all persecuted Protestants—occurred to RÉnÈe; some German ladies she had known at Dresden were prepared to welcome her there.

She suggested this plan to the Countess of Nassau one heavy November day when they walked in the castle gardens to catch the faint chill glimpse of the winter sun.

"You, too, are eager to leave us!" exclaimed the Countess, who could not forget Anne's fierce denunciations of the dulness of the life at Dillenburg.

"No, Madame, no," said RÉnÈe eagerly; "but I must work—in some way I must justify my life—or die."

Juliana pressed her hand kindly.

"I know, my child, I know. There is indeed nothing but idleness for you here where we women are too many already."

"It is terrible to be a woman!" cried RÉnÈe. "Too many, ah yes, too many!"

"But we are not useless," said the Countess gently.

The waiting-woman answered with passionate conviction—

"Not such women as you with five sons!—but women such as I! I am like a dead leaf before the breeze; if I am cast away and lost, no one will be the poorer. If I had been a man, however mean and humble, I could have followed—followed," she avoided the Prince's name, "the Protestant flag—I could have at least died. It is not even permitted to women to die nobly."

The Countess looked at her curiously and was silent. To Juliana also the enclosed life of a woman seemed at times terrible; there was something awful in this post in the background, always to be patient, always serving, always waiting—worst of all, the waiting.

At that moment the fate of the women seemed worse than that of the men; their piteous figures stood out mournfully against the red background of the persecutions and the war: Sabina of Egmont left starving with her children at the mercy of the man who had slain her husband; the Dowager Countess of Hoorne, having lost one son on the scaffold, moving heaven and earth to save the other from a similar fate; HÉlÈne, Montigny's wife, widowed after a four month's marriage, and weeping a husband enclosed in the hopeless depths of a Spanish prison; the Countess of Hoogstraaten, ruined, thrice bereaved; the Countess of Aremberg suddenly widowed; and all those more obscure women who were orphaned, bereft of husband and child, spurned from their dismantled homes to beg or starve.

Perhaps it was better to be a man and face a swift death in the open field.

"But we have no choice," said the Countess, with a little smile that creased her fresh wrinkled face; "we must do what falls to our lot and not think of the difficulties."

"What falls to me?" asked RÉnÈe; "no one wants me, nor ever has since my mother died. The Princess always hated me. I made no friends; my home, my family, was swept away in a ruin that has pursued everything I have loved or cared for ever since—my country, my faith, my——"

She checked herself suddenly and went pale.

"... Your love?" finished the Countess softly. "Surely you have loved some one?"

RÉnÈe hesitated a moment then answered in a low voice—

"Yes, I loved. Some one who is not of my station and who hardly knows my name nor my face. He—he went to the war, and he, like all, is quite ruined now and quite desolate. Probably I shall never see him again."

She stopped suddenly and faced the Countess, her warm rich beauty glowing in the grey air against the grey background of garden wall and castle.

"That is my story and my life," she said. "What would you do with such a life, Madame?"

Truly the Countess did not know; her own years had been so full that she could not picture an empty existence.

"You cannot understand," added RÉnÈe, "what it is to mourn the loss of what you never had."

"You will love again," said the Countess, whose outlook was eminently practical and sane, "or at least you will take a husband, and then your life will be full."

"Some women love once only, alas for them!" answered RÉnÈe, "perhaps it is a foolishness, but one cannot change one's heart."

Then she shrank into herself and was once more enfolded in reserve deeper than before, as if afraid of having said too much.

The sun had disappeared now, to be seen no more that day, and dark clouds full of rain or perhaps snow closed over the sky. The two women returned to the castle, which was cheerful with the light of great wood fires and pleasant with the sound of children playing.

By the hooded chimney-piece of the dining-room, where the meal was being already prepared, sat Vanderlinden, the Elector Augustus' alchemist. He had been sent by his master, who still placed implicit faith in his charts and tables, to persuade Count John that further exertions on the behalf of the Netherlands were useless, and that the stars plainly indicated that the Prince should return to Germany and not risk his fortunes further.

It was strange to RÉnÈe to see the old man and recall how she had last seen him at the brilliant Leipsic wedding, and to think of all that had gone between, and how that famous marriage had ended, and yet how, in a circle, things had come round, and how Augustus was still consulting the stars and casting horoscopes and charts, and the alchemist still searching for the Philosopher's Stone and only a little greyer and more bent than before.

His talk was still of his experiments; outside events had touched him very little, and he took but a slight interest in the tasks of fortune-telling the Elector, his patron, set him. His eyes were still fixed on the Great Discovery, the magnum opus—eternal gold, eternal youth, eternal health—and in the pursuit of this object, for which he had lost both gold, youth, and health, he was as eager and as sanguine as he had ever been.

He remembered RÉnÈe, and asked if she still had the charm he had given her; she showed it to him instantly, her only ornament, hidden in the folds of her cambric vest.

She asked the old man if he had heard of DuprÈs, and he told her calmly, without surprise, that the skryer, after escaping from the bloody rout of Jemmingen, had returned to him at Dresden and begged to be taken into his old master's service.

"They always return at length these restless rascals," added Vanderlinden. "And I have taken him back, for he is clever, and when the mood is on him can raise the spirits in the crystal."

So DuprÈs' tale had ended in a circle too, and he was back again at his old employment under his old master; somehow RÉnÈe was glad that he was not in Cologne.

The Countess of Nassau joined the two as they stood and talked by the fire.

"Well, Magister," she said, "do you still hope to find the Philosopher's Stone?"

"I do not despair at all, Your Excellency," he answered quietly.

"But if there is no such stone?" asked the Countess.

He smiled as one who cannot restrain his amusement at the foolishness of the ignorant.

"It has been discovered, Madame, many times," he answered gently.

"And always lost again?"

"And always lost."

"That is strange, Magister, that more care was not taken to preserve such a secret."

"Ah, Madame, it is too great a thing to be lightly imparted from one man to another; it can only be attained after much labour, much suffering, prayer, and humiliation."

"It would change the world," said RÉnÈe, and she thought of the Prince and how gold was all the difference between success and failure. William had failed through lack of it; for that reason Alva might fail too.

"It would be a terrible power," added the Countess thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is as well that it is not often discovered."

The old man stroked his beard and looked into the fire silently; he seemed so humble, so serene, so insignificant, that RÉnÈe wondered why he was so eager for gold and power. Then she thought that perhaps he cared for neither, and that he had pitted himself against this secret as William had pitted himself against Philip, and that in both it was not the thought of the reward that urged them on to undertake tasks seemingly impossible, but the glory of the struggle, the mighty pleasure of overcoming, the ultimate hope of attainment.

"And my sons?" asked Juliana of Stolberg; "what disastrous prophecies have you made against the House of Nassau?"

Vanderlinden came from his dreams with a sigh.

"They might all be safe if they would be warned," he said. "Your Excellency heard that an astrologer warned Count Hoorne not to go to Brussels? And yet he went and died."

"A brave man cannot take these warnings," said the Countess stoutly. "It is not for Princes and leaders to count the cost of the steps they make, nor to think of their own lives."

"Then my charts and tables are useless," replied the alchemist.

"They please the Elector," said Juliana.

The alchemist was silent; he knew himself that his prophecies did little more than amuse his master.

"You shall speak to Count John, as the Elector bade you," resumed the Countess, "but you will not suppose that any one can turn back the Count nor his brothers from what they have set their hands to."

She spoke with pride and courage, but sorrowfully, as one who sees clearly and unfalteringly ahead and sees nothing but grief and trouble.

With an unconscious gesture of patience she folded her hands together and looked at the window against which big drops of rain were beginning to splash.

Her thoughts had returned to her three defeated sons at Strasburg, as the alchemist's thoughts had returned to the Elixir of life and wealth. RÉnÈe, standing between them, felt forgotten by both; she, too, was thinking of Strasburg and of the man there disbanding his troops in humiliation and failure.

It was a day in early spring—spring, yet sharp and chill with winter—that the three penniless and defeated Nassau Counts rode through France to offer their swords—all they had now to offer—to the Prince de CondÉ who was upholding the Protestant cause in France.

Eight thousand of their men had been slain during the campaign, thirty thousand had been disbanded at Strasburg, and a little handful of cavalry had elected to follow the fortunes of the three adventurers, for the exiled, landless, and ruined brothers were now no better in the eyes of Europe.

With all their strenuous exertions and the energetic help of Count John, they had not been able to even half pay the troops.

William had personally undertaken to discharge this debt from the first money he could command, and solemnly promised, that if he should return alive from CondÉ's army still penniless, he would surrender his person as hostage for their money.

Before he left Germany he endeavoured to come to a meeting with his wife; but Anne could not or would not move, and it was without seeing her again that he left his native country to take service under a foreign flag.

Granvelle, snug in Rome, laughed; Alva celebrated in Brussels an extravagantly arrogant open triumph; Philip triumphed quietly within his own cold narrow heart.

So ended the first struggle between William of Orange and the power of Spain; so, stripped even of fame and glory, laughed at by his enemies, despaired of by his friends, did he, who had been one of the greatest and most magnificent Princes of his time, ride into exile.

Yet neither William nor his brothers were gloomy; there was a music in their souls, a fire in their blood, that ever kept them from melancholy; even when they spoke of Adolphus or Hoogstraaten, it was with an affectionate smile, almost gaily, as they knew these dead would have wished them to speak.

Skirting Switzerland the little company passed into Franche ComtÉ, and one of their first halting-places was near BesanÇon.

The morning after they had pitched their tents William was riding slowly through the fields which were beginning to be faintly coloured with the first trembling spring flowers.

A little thicket of hawthorn concealed the high road, and beyond the meadows woods sloped over undulating valleys and gently rising hills; numberless birds were singing in the little copse, and the sky was a delicate azure veiled with milk-white clouds; it was the first day of real spring, of the awakening of the earth, of the return of the promise of life, increase, and abundance.

William had not been long alone in his musing progress through the fields when he was joined by Count Henry.

This youth, in his green vesture, his little helmet with the long, single heron's feather, with his gay carriage, his handsome face and eager expression, was as bright as the morning, as pleasant as the early spring.

He spoke to his brother with a little laugh, as if greatly amused.

"There is a party of travellers who are afraid of us! They have sent a messenger to know if they may safely pass along the road where we are encamped."

William, too, smiled.

"Give them all assurances, Henry," he answered, "that we are not robbers, even if we are outlaws."

"Will you not see the messenger?" asked the young Count. "They seem people of distinction."

The two turned back across the fields to the outskirts of the camp where the messenger waited; he was a young Frenchman, well set up and armed, he seemed a squire or upper servant.

"This is the Prince of Orange," said Henry.

The fellow pulled off his cap.

"I salute Your Highness," he said rather defiantly. "And, as your intentions in this country are not known, I am here to know if the ladies under my care may pass your encampment?"

"You should need no assurance," replied the Prince coldly. "You know who I am."

The Frenchman remained obstinate, though he flushed a little under the rebuke.

"The ladies I escort are nuns—an abbess and her train," he replied, "and Your Highness is a heretic and rumoured to be joining CondÉ——"

"Ah," smiled William. "You think the heretics war on women as the Papists do? Go and tell your mistress that she has my word for her safety," he added carelessly.

The man left them and galloped back to the road.

"Who is the abbess?" asked William of his brother. "Have you seen her?"

"No, only a cloud of women and servants on mules in the distance, all chattering with fright. I think the abbess is some great lady on a visit to a noble kinswoman."

The Prince was returning to the camp when Louis galloped up, begging him to see the nuns go by.

"Let us salute them," he said, "and show them that heretics are not boors."

The three brothers rode back to the road, skirting the hawthorn copse, and reined up under a delicate group of young beech trees.

A little dust, a little chatter and trampling, jingle and clatter of harness, and the cavalcade came into view, preceded by the stout French man-at-arms and a number of armed men-servants.

Directly behind them and riding in front of a group of nuns came the abbess.

She was mounted on a fine white palfrey, her habit was largely white though she wore a black cloak; doeskin gloves covered her hands, and she guided the horse with glittering scarlet reins.

On her breast sparkled a large gold cross, and a rosary of carved gold beads hung at her waist cord.

She sat very upright, in no way hampered by the full robes which concealed her figure and fell over the horse almost to the ground.

Her attention was instantly attracted by the three young men under the trees; she raised her hand for the procession to halt, and said in a very sure clear voice—

"Is one of these gentlemen the Prince of Orange?"

As she named the great heretic the nuns shuddered and murmured; the men, though they halted obediently, frowned. William came forward a pace from his brothers; his slight figure, partially armed in steel, sat motionless on his grey horse; he was bare-headed, and his hair blew across his forehead; every line of his dark tired face was clear in the unshaded sunlight.

"I am he, Madame," he answered, and he looked at her curiously.

The abbess returned his gaze steadily; there was in her look the same serene steadiness as had sounded in her voice.

She was very young, little more than a child, though the white framing her face, the demure nun's robe, gave her an air of gravity; her face was pale and delicate, the features irregular and attractive, the mouth sweet, the eyes large, dark, beautiful, and wistful.

There was wistfulness in her tone when she spoke again.

"I have heard so much of Monseigneur, even in our convent. I thank Monseigneur for his courtesy in allowing our passage."

When she spoke thus, gravely in her pretty French, she was exquisitely charming, like a child masking in an elder's gown, so little did she seem to suit her habit.

"We are but soldiers of fortune, Madame," returned the Prince; "it is not for you to thank me—this is your country."

An elderly nun rode up to the young abbess and quickly whispered to her that it was indecorous to hold converse with the champion of the heretics and one going to join the rebels against the King.

The abbess listened without a blush, then again turned her serene steady gaze on the Prince.

"I am Charlotte de Bourbon, daughter of the Duke de Montmorency, and Abbess of JoÜarrs," she said, "so you will understand, Monseigneur, why I cannot longer speak with you."

William understood; the Duke de Montmorency was one of the hottest Catholic nobles and one of the chiefs of the party against which CondÉ was struggling.

"I have been an abbess since I was twelve," continued the nun, "and know very little of the world—but I may say, God keep you, and have no stain on my conscience."

Without waiting for an answer she touched up her horse and passed on, the little train of nuns rapidly following.

The Prince was almost startled by the earnestness of the abbess's last words, which seemed full of vivid meaning.

"Had she not been a nun and Montmorency's daughter," he said, "I should have thought she blessed us."

"It is a sweet woman," remarked Louis, "that they have stifled in that habit."

The Prince watched the nuns go their way until the turn of the winding road had hidden them, then went back to the camp, to go his way of exile and ruin and loneliness.

He pulled at the hawthorn boughs as he passed, and thought of Anne of Saxony.

"I certainly am not fortunate," he remarked, with a sudden smile.

"There is the future," said Louis hopefully.

"Ah yes," answered the Prince. "The future and the past—in both there is encouragement, though the present be sad. Our task is clear before us and we are young."

"And if we die young, God will be pitiful," said Henry gravely, "and forgive us our sins because we were not wise."

Louis thought of Adolphus and of the inscription on the blood-sprinkled banner that had wrapped him, "Nunc aut nunquam, recuperare aut mori."

William too had recalled his dead brother when Henry spoke. He believed that the coming years held the same fate for all of them, that neither they nor any who followed them would escape the end which befell those who defied Philip—the end which had already overtaken so many besides the young Nassau.

But though the Prince of Orange was one who loved life, he was neither regretful nor afraid.