“Yes,” answers the Englishman shortly, and to prevent [[41]]further interrogation queries: “Can you tell me where the Bodé Volckers’ live?”
“Oh, every one knows that; he is our ex-Burgomaster, the merchant prince, Niklaas Bodé Volcker, who lives on the Place de Meir.”
“Ah, the Place de Meir, thank you, señor,” answers Guy. He turns away, and calling the link boy again, says: “Bodé Volcker’s!”
“That means two stivers more,” cries the urchin; “anyone that would visit a burgomaster’s could afford two stivers.”
“Four, if you take me there quickly.”
“Four? Pots dit en dat! you must be a count,” cries the delighted child, and, skipping vivaciously before his patron, he soon guides him back past the cathedral to the magnificent residence where old Bodé Volcker, merchant prince of that day, whose argosies sailed to the Indies, the Baltic and the Mediterranean, lived in great state and pomp and wealth, but for all that was still only a merchant, trader and burgher; and to the haughty nobles of that day nothing more than the dust of the earth—unless they wanted to borrow his money. But as has always been the case, great financial success has prompted social ambition. Niklaas Bodé Volcker’s family is even now knocking at noble and aristocratic doors.
Evidences of this comes to Guy almost as he reaches the portals of the merchant.
The house is pretentious, being built of cut stone around a large courtyard, the archway to this permitting a carriage to drive in, and acting as the entrance to the mansion itself, which is lighted up, one portion more brilliantly than the other. This is apparently the counting and sample room of Niklaas Bodé Volcker himself. From out its open doors several clerks and half a dozen porters are passing, and big vans of goods are arriving loaded with what are apparently cloths, silks and satins from the flooded water-front. Everyone seems to be on the alert.
“I must see Heer Bodé Volcker for a moment,” says Guy to a bustling apprentice.
“Must see Heer Bodé Volcker to-night?” gasps the [[42]]man; “the night in which his warehouses are all flooded?”