“Reform him!” cries Dirk Coornhert. “No, he swore he’d drink the health of Albert Durer’s ghost to-day, and laughed in my face: ‘When I’m drunk, I’m happy; I forget my creditors. When I’m sober my creditors don’t let me forget them.’ ”
“Verdomd! And I’m one of them,” growls the brewer. “Two thousand carolus guilders for malt beer consumed at his house. A painter building the greatest palace in Antwerp! Above its portal that drunken conceit he’s painted: himself standing brush in hand and the muses flying from all over the heavens to crown him. And out of it he drives each day with four white [[73]]horses in state, everybody doffing their hats to him, his creditors bowing most humbly of all. If I didn’t think the populace would mob me, I’d have him in the debtors’ prison. And then his wife! Faugh! her dandy airs—as if she were a countess.”
“Yes, she has ruined him,” murmurs the painter. “A woman’s ambition to flaunt it with the noblesse, which a painter cannot do, though some of our burghers seem to think it an easy task. There’s poor Bodé Volcker! Have you heard of his daughter? They say the fair Wilhelmina aspires to consort with the nobility, and has been taught to shake her feet under the rod of a French dancing master and play on the harpsichord and spinet, and sing with rare shakes and quavers and high-screeching notes like a lewd Italian masquer. Ah! the days of Antwerp are changing. What would her poor mother say? But old Niklaas is up in arms, and swears his daughter shall go into his shop and sell his silks and satins behind his counter, as her mother did, though they say he’s worth a million crowns or more.”
“Donder en Bliksem!” growls the brewer, “what’s a million crowns, or two million, either, now—it’s only so much more for the accursed tenth penny tax to eat up.”
“Yes, God help every one,” assents the printer. “The tenth penny tax will in time take all we have.”
Then the brewer shakes his head sadly over a mug of strongest Flemish ale and the printer sips his Rhine wine in silence; for Alva has just levied his celebrated tenth penny tax, which decrees that every transfer of merchandise in the Netherlands shall yield one-tenth of its amount to the royal treasury, each and every time it is bought or sold. This, of course, on active business means ultimately complete confiscation and absolute ruin to the great trading classes of Brabant, Flanders and Holland.
This tenth penny tax does not make the crowd very loving to the smattering of Spanish and Italian officers of the garrison, who stride about with jingling spurs and clattering swords and armor, caring very little whether they tread on burghers’ toes or not, and burying every now and then their fiercely curled mustachios [[74]]in flagons of Spanish wine, mine host and his assistants serving them with greatest deference and humility; for Antwerp writhed and groaned, but still lay prone under the iron heel of Spanish military rule—from noble to peasant, from merchant to fisherman.
Among these military gallants none swagger more proudly than Ensign de Busaco. Seeing Guy, this ferocious little dandy strides over, and, slapping the Englishman cordially on the shoulder, cries: “What do you wager, Capitan Guido, on the drinking bout? I am offering even doubloons on the Drunkards of Brussels.”
“That’s hardly fair,” says Guy, “six drunkards to one drunkard. But sit down, and remember your promise of last night to join me in a friendly beaker.”
“Gracios, Señor Capitan,” murmurs the young officer, and soon he and Chester are chatting over the juice of the grape.