Now the group in the centre appeared only like a sombre mass of dull and lifeless colours; Jacqueline's white satin gown took on a leaden hue; the brilliance of the sky had become like a presage of storm. The women shivered beneath their ragged kerchiefs; some of the children started to cry.
Then, one by one, the crowd began to disperse. Walking, halting, crawling, they wended their way back to their dreary homes,—there to wait again, to suffer and to endure; there to conceal all the heroism of this patient resignation, all the stoicism of a race which no power could conquer, no tyranny force into submission.
And once more silence descended on the hapless city, and the mantle of night lay mercifully upon her grievous wounds.
VIII
And far away in the Spanish camps, the soldiers and their captains marvelled how joy-bells could be ringing in a city which was in the throes of her death agony. But the Duke of Parma knew what it meant, as did the members of his staff—del Fuente, his second in command, de Salvado, Bracamonte, de Landas and the others. More than one of their wily spies had succeeded before now in swimming across the Schelde and in scaling the tumble-down walls of the heroic city, and had brought back the news of what was doing in there, in the midst of a starving and obstinate population.
'The public betrothal to a fickle Prince who will never come,' said the Duke grimly, between his teeth. 'At any rate, not before we have worked our will with those mulish rebels.'
'We could take their pestilent town by storm to-morrow,' remarked de Landas, with a note of fierce hatred in his voice, 'if your Highness would but give the order.'
'Bah!' retorted the Duke. 'Let them rot! Why should we waste valuable lives and precious powder, when the next few days must see the final surrender of that peccant rat-hole?'
He gave a coarse laugh and shrugged his shoulders.
'I believe,' he said to de Landas, 'that I once promised you Cambray and all that it contains—what?'