- Dyckfelt gave a movement of irrepressible excitement.
"Do they not recognise the difficulties of Your Highness?"
William looked again at the letter.
"These are their words, Mynheer: 'If the circumstances stand so with Your Highness, that you believe you can get here time enough, in a condition to give assistance this year sufficient for a relief under these circumstances which have been so represented, we who subscribe this will not fail to attend Your Highness upon your landing, and to do all that lies in our power to prepare others to be in as much readiness as such an action is capable of, where there is so much danger in communicating an affair of such a nature, till it be near the time of its being made public.' Then follow their difficulties: 'We know not what alarm your preparations for this expedition may give, or what notice it will be necessary for you to give the States beforehand, by either of which means their intelligence or suspicions here may be such as may cause us to be secured before your landing——'"
William laid the paper down.
"That is their main trouble—they doubt whether I can be so secret as not to cause them and all like to support me to be clapt up before I sail—and wish to know my opinion on it—further, they mislike my compliment to the King on the birth of the Prince of Wales, which hath, they say, done me injury among the Protestants, of whom not one in a thousand believeth the child to be the Queen's—and for the rest—dare I, will I, adventure on the attempt?"
He drew a deep breath as he finished this speech, and fixed his eyes on the dark, uncurtained square of the window as if he pictured something in his mind too vast, too confined, for the narrow room, and must imagine it filling the silent night without.
- Fagel spoke, very low.
"Your Highness doth not hesitate?"
"I cannot," answered the Prince simply; "for it is the only way to gain England from France."