She was glad, too, that Anne was leaving the Netherlands without having again seen Jan Rubens or Duprès; she felt the Princess would be safe in Dillenburg.
Yet Rénèe was sad; she could not be happy leaving behind her a country so broken, so oppressed, so desolate.
She heard men mention Alva with awe and terror; she saw that the Prince was departing before he came; and she feared even worse things for the Netherlands than their present great calamities.
But her piety had strengthened; her body, denied and rendered subject to her soul, grew weaker, and the soul within became stronger, and so nearer God.
She trusted in Him not to forsake His people, and she believed in William of Orange as His Captain.
The gorgeous young Papist cavalier whom she had looked on for the first time at Leipsic on his wedding day, whom she had thought frivolous and worldly, was now become the man on whom centred all her hopes for her country and her faith.
Other and reckless men had taken up the people's cause and won the people's heart—men like Brederode, Count Louis, Ste Aldegonde, and De Hammes; but though these were the names shouted in the market-place, Rénèe had given no heed to them at all.
It was to the Prince, who was, nominally at least, still a Papist, who had acted until the very last in fulfilment of his duty to the King, who had checked the fervour of the Reformers and was even hated by the Calvinists for his behaviour after the engagement at Ostrawell—it was to him that Rénèe confidently looked to save the Netherlands.
And that confidence, strengthened by her woman's devotion to a person beloved, supported her in this second flight from her native country.
She was so lost in thought as she went about her task that it was with a little start that she became aware of the presence of another in the chamber.