The Amulet

Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Valerine Blas and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
Translated Expressly for this Edition.
In the Amulet, Hendrick Conscience has worked up an incident which occurred at Antwerp, in the 16th century, into a story of great power and deep interest. It was a dark and bloody deed committed, but swift and terrible was the retribution, strikingly illustrating how God laughs the sinner to scorn, and how the most cunningly devised schemes are frustrated, when He permits the light of His avenging justice to expose them in their enormity. On the contrary, it forcibly proves that virtuous actions, sooner or later, bear abundant fruit even in this world. If a man's sins bring upon his head a weight of woe, so do his good deeds draw down the benedictions of heaven and serve as a shield to protect him from his enemies.
Baltimore .
Previous to the close of the fifteenth century, the direction taken by European commerce remained unchanged. America had not been discovered, and the only known route to India was by land.
Venice, enthroned by her central position as queen of commerce, compelled the nations of Europe and Asia to convey to her port all the riches of the world.
One single city, Bruges in Flanders, serving as an international mart for the people of the North and South, shared, in some measure, the commercial prosperity of Venice; but popular insurrections and continual civil wars had induced a large number of foreign merchants to prefer Brabant to Flanders, and Antwerp was becoming a powerful rival to Bruges.
A few years before the commencement of the religious wars which proved so disastrous to the country, Antwerp was in a most flourishing condition. Thousands of ships of every form and size covered its broad river like a forest of masts, whose many-colored flags indicated the presence of traders from all the commercial nations of the globe.
This extraordinary activity induced many foreigners to establish themselves in a city where gold was so abundant, and where every one might reasonably hope for large profits.