“Impossible, I must go on.”
“You shan’t, papa, YOU SHAN’T! You’ve been away so long from orders you’re becoming mutinous and undisciplined.”
With this she treats him in a way that Alva loves from her, but would permit from no one else upon this earth, man nor woman. While she is speaking to him, despite his protestations, Doña Hermoine has got his helmet off and is patting his gray locks and pulling the two long tresses of his silver beard with her white hands and crying: “Now I have you a prisoner! Ten kisses for your ransom!”
“Santos y demonios! you’re the worst rebel in the Netherlands,” laughs the Duke.
“Yes, the most defiant and the only one who will conquer YOU!”
This pleases my lord of Alva, who is in what is for him a jovial humor, and he says: “You’re right; I have Haarlem now as surely in my grasp as if I had my troops in that dogged town. De Bossu has defeated Marinus Brandt upon the lake, the town is now cut off from provisions—it must be mine. Then when I have trampled out these rebels and can hand over this land unstained by sedition to my lord, Philip the King, we’ll go back to Spain together, and away from the fogs of this northern country, among the pomegranates, the vines, the cork trees and the olives, we’ll forget there ever has been war.”
“Yes,” cries the girl, “and we’ll take him with us.”
“Him? Who?”
“My coming husband.”
“Thy coming husband! Of whom are you talking, child?” says Alva in astounded voice. “Never saw I [[242]]woman that was so free from earthly loves!” Then he laughs: “This is a rare change. Last time you were drooping. You had psalm-book in your hand and ritual, and talked of being the bride of Mother Church.”