"On this subject, yes."
The Prince rose and held out his hand affectionately. "You will stay with us to-night?" he added with courtesy.
The Landgrave refused.
"I go to my lodging; I will come to-morrow to see if you are in a better frame of mind, Highness."
He saluted both, and abruptly left; the Prince returned to his unfinished letter.
"It is a strange thing," said Count Hoogstraaten, "how many are ready to hold a man back, how few to push him forward! Always these councils of prudence, of caution, of non-resistance, of humility, and cringing!"
And the fiery little soldier went angrily to the window and stared fiercely out on the hot night; there was something lion-like in his slender heavy-shouldered figure, in his blunt-featured face, in his pose of noble anger as he gazed out on the darkness as if it concealed the numberless hosts of his foes.
The Prince finished his letter and joined his friend in the window-place.
"If we live we shall succeed," he said. "If we die as the others died—well, a worse thing might befall us. And what does submission ever gain? Better to fall like Adolphus than like—Egmont."
His voice saddened on his friend's name and his eyes too turned towards the darkness as if he also pictured there the swarming battalions of his mighty enemies.