CHAPTER I
DILLENBURG
Life in the ancestral castle of the German Nassaus at Dillenburg was very different from what the life in Brussels, Antwerp, or Breda had been.
The old Countess of Nassau, Juliana of Stollberg, was the head of this household, and with her lived Count John, his wife the Landgravine Elisabeth, and their family; here, too, resided the unmarried daughters of the house, Juliana, and Magdalena—lately betrothed to Wolfgang, Count of Hohenlohe; while the married daughters, Anna, the Countess of Nassau Saarbruck; and Elisabeth, Countess of Solms Braunfels; Catherine, Countess of Schwarzburg; and the Countess van der Berg were continually coming and going on visits to their old home.
There was not much money and no magnificence at Dillenburg when the eldest son, practically an exile and a fugitive, arrived with his sickly peevish wife and his train of a hundred and fifty—very shorn splendour for the Prince of Orange, but a considerable strain on the resources of Count John.
But the welcome was none the less passionately sincere in love and pride, and William was treated by his family with the same deference as if he had been still the favourite of Charles V, or the greatest man in the Netherlands.
His brothers, Adolphus and Henry—a youth who had just left College—returned eagerly to Dillenburg to join him, and Count Louis left Brederode, who was revolving one scheme after another that came to nothing, and hastened to Germany.
Meanwhile William waited for news from the Netherlands, for news of the proceedings of Alva, and for answers to the letters that he had sent to the German Protestant Princes—the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse.
Now at last he had begun to reap the fruit of that foresight which had induced him to engage in his second marriage despite the lively disapproval of Philip.
That marriage had been as disastrous as his worst enemies could have hoped, but at least it had given him some claim on the friendship of Anne's relations.
William had also asked the old Landgrave Philip to send him a Lutheran preacher, who was immediately and joyfully dispatched, and the Prince of Orange occupied the first leisure he had known for years in studying the New Testament and listening to the exposition of the tenets of Martin Luther.