This was the first moment of unalloyed pleasure I have felt since I came into my fortune, when I once more cast my eyes over the library and beheld it with all the pride of ownership. I involuntarily put forth my hand to snatch up one of the volumes, as if I thereby wished to signify I was taking possession. Van Beek smiled and twinkled his cunning little eyes; but the maid, who was standing by, looked at me as though I had committed a sacrilege.
“I should rather have thought the Jonker would have preferred my lady’s Bible,” she said.
“I should certainly like the Bible as well as the other books, Mrs. Jones—that is to say, unless you wish to keep it yourself as a memento.”
“Oh no, Jonker! such a worldly, new-fashioned book I would not have in my possession. I can’t look upon it as God’s word; and I could never understand how my lady found edification in it.”
“What’s the matter with the Bible?” I asked Van Beek as we left the house.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing. It is an ordinary States-Bible, only not printed in the old-fashioned German type.”[1]
Upon my word, I thought aunt must indeed have been pretty liberal-minded to have put up with so bigoted a servant for so many years.
The next day I set out for the small town of Zutphen, which is within an easy drive of the Castle de Werve.
[1] The strictly orthodox party in Holland will only make use of the version of the Bible approved by the States-General in the seventeenth century; the bigots insist upon its being printed in the German characters in use at the time when the first copies were issued.