For three years the Prince has been in Holland. He has temporarily left Leyden, where a pestilence is raging. For several days he has been journeying about, for he is anxious not alone to acquire an education, but also to study the people with whom he is living.
The boat stops at a village and the passengers go ashore. The village is a model of Dutch cleanliness. The neatly built houses, mostly one story in height, are handsomely painted, and the paint is always kept fresh. The mirror-like windows are closely hung with snow-white curtains. There is a little garden in front of every house. The pavements consist of small red and blue tiles so laid that they resemble the pattern of a Turkish carpet. No filth is permitted to remain upon the streets. They are thoroughly washed and sprinkled with white sand and sometimes with flowers. No cow or horse is allowed to stray about. They are all kept in stalls in the rear of the houses. Not only the wooden implements in the houses, but the gates, the trellises, and posts in the fields against which the cattle rub themselves are painted, and some of the latter have carved work at the top. Every house has two doors, one at the rear for ordinary outgoing and incoming, the other being used as the principal entrance, and opened only upon the occasion of christenings, marriages, and funerals. This door, the pride of the owner, is covered with carving and here and there gilded. Flowers grow luxuriously in the gardens. The tops of the trees are cut off and the trunks smeared with white paint. This description will give the reader a picture of a Dutch village of that time as well as of the well-to-do condition of the people.
After our travellers had drunk some good beer and eaten a lobster, they hired horses and were soon on their way to Arnheim, a servant who was to bring the horses back following them. The nearer they came to the city the more delightful was the country, which began to look like a large garden. Although there were no rocky heights, the high dikes which rose along the way, the multitude of country seats, mansions, and towers, the beautiful groups of trees in the fields and meadows and upon the edges of the streams, varied the landscape continually and presented pictures worthy of the brush of the greatest painter. Cities, villages, castles with their luxurious surroundings, country houses of every style of architecture with handsome gardens, boundless grassy meadows with herds of cattle, lakes which had been made by peat-cutters, countless islands upon which long reeds were cultivated as thatch for the houses, serving also as homes for great flocks of waterfowl,—such was the panorama which met the eyes of the Prince.
The life of the Prince in this richly blest country was permanently influenced by it. His love of art and science was developed and he gained greatly in knowledge of State affairs and the ways of the world from his intercourse with Dutch statesmen, burghers, and peasants. It was of the highest significance also in relation to the future that he studied the plans and schemes of the great Prince of Orange. The army of this man was still a nursery of field-marshals and naval officers.
The Prince and Leuchtmar at last reached Arnheim. The Prince occupied a beautiful country house in the suburbs. Let us go with the Prince to the house while Leuchtmar is otherwise engaged. The entrance is paved with white marble, covered with a carpet and bordered with veined marble to the height of four feet. The Prince enters a lofty apartment on the right. The fireplace is of black marble with a broad mirror above it. Upon the wall surrounded by chaplets are half-length portraits of the Elector George William and his wife. Weapons of various kinds are also suspended among the pictures. A dark polished table, with chairs placed by it, and a bookcase are the only furniture in the room. As soon as the Prince has changed his dress he takes his diary and notes down his recollections of the trip. Ever since Leuchtmar’s talks the Prince had devoted himself assiduously to this diary. All the more unfortunate is it that it has been lost.
Chapter XX
In the Park
In the vicinity of Arnheim, at Rehnen, dwelt the clever and once so beautiful Elizabeth, daughter of King James the First of England, who still called herself Queen of Bohemia and Electoress of the Palatinate. Her country house stood in a handsome park. The last hopes of her husband, Frederick the Fifth, disappeared with the death of Gustavus Adolphus. Shortly after the news came he was stricken down with an illness which proved fatal. Both the oldest sons of the Electoress, the Prince, subsequently the Elector Carl Ludwig, and Prince Rupert, who was a year older than the Electoral Prince Frederick William, had been fellow-students with him at Leyden and in daily intercourse with him. They were now spending a short time with their mother in Rehnen. Besides these, the Electoress had a younger son, Prince Moritz, and two daughters, Princess Henrietta, who was so well educated that in her nineteenth year she engaged in arguments with Dutch scholars, and Princess Louise, who was sprightlier by nature and had a special talent in painting.
While the Prince was living in Arnheim it was his custom to ride over to Rehnen every afternoon and make a call of a few hours, returning at dusk. One day, as he approached Rehnen, he was informed by the porter to whom he gave his horse that he would find the Electoress with the princes and princesses in the pavilion at the lower end of the park. In the middle of the park he reached a garden ornamented with marble statuary. From this point he saw his princely relatives. The green doors and windows of the pavilion in which they were sitting were open, so that the sunshine and perfume of the garden found their way into it. His cousins saw him coming and advanced to meet him, and the Electoress and princesses greeted him affectionately upon the estrade.
The time passed in animated conversation. It was the dearest wish of the Electoress to secure the heir of Brandenburg for her son-in-law. The pleasure of the conversation, however, was soon seriously marred. The Princess Henrietta asked if Wallenstein had not actually attempted to secure the crown of Bohemia. The Princess Louise maintained that he had. “I look with a shudder,” said she, “into the dark, bottomless abyss of that man’s soul. Despicable ambitions rage there. Selfishness characterizes every mortal more or less, but he had no other impelling motive. All love in his nature was destroyed by it, and where there is no love one becomes a fiend. What were Luther, the Pope, or Calvin to him! He made no account of them. His own person was all he cared for. Many a time I have said ‘He is Satan incarnate!’”
“And yet,” remarked the Electoress, “his faith in the stars—”