The four words gave the Prince a strange pang in the remembrance; he crossed the room and looked at a little painting of Anna van Buren, the first Princess of Orange, which hung on the opposite wall.
The pale prim face, her gentle eyes, her drooping mouth, the very dress she wore, and the jewel round her neck which he had given—he recalled her so clearly—even as she was painted now—yet how remote she was; she had made no impression on his life, and he never thought of her now save as he might think of some playmate of his youth—for they had been married at seventeen, and she had died almost before he had reached full manhood; but she had been to him what the wives of most great nobles were to their husbands—a little more than the wives of Hoorne and Brederode were to them, a little less than Egmont's wife was to him. In the misery and humiliation of his present marriage he could recall her gratefully.
But love—"Montigny loves his wife"—the words came again to him like the echo in a shell held to the ear, and sounded sadly in the loneliness of the Prince's heart. "If a man had great difficulties and a hard and toilsome task, a loving wife would be a marvellous comfort," he thought. Then he laughed at his own fancies. "A man must not depend on women. There are things to be done in which no woman can help."
He went to the window, opened the shutters and looked out upon the storm.
The rain had ceased, and the bitter winds were tearing the black clouds apart and hurling them across the heavens; the curled thread of the new moon glimpsed here and there amid the vapours like a frail barque amid the wreckage of a hideous sea.
The fair fields of Brabant and the proud gay town of Brussels were blotted out in the darkness, but a faint strain of melody rose fitfully on the winds: it was the carillon from some hidden clock tower.
William of Orange stood silent, holding the window casement open with either hand and listening to the storm that for him held the sound of gathering armies, the tramp of feet, the galloping of horses, the flapping of banners straining at their poles—the coming of great multitudes onrushing in the agony and the exultation of supreme conflict.
CHAPTER VI
THE EDICTS
Throughout the Netherlands the Inquisition was again formally and officially proclaimed; it was answered by a cry of passionate wrath and hate, and bitter despair and agony, intense enough to have reached Philip in the cells of the Escorial.
Foreign merchants and workers fled, houses of business were shut up, shops closed, banks ruined; commerce—nay, the ordinary business of life—was almost suspended; whole districts emigrated, abandoning their work and their property. In a short time famine threatened, riots broke out, and the daily barbarous executions were scenes of frantic rage on the part of the maddened population which the officers of the Crown sometimes found it difficult or impossible to repress; more than once the victims were rescued from the very stake.