The turreted and gabled mansion, crowned by a tower or belfry, and built in the most elaborate style of Gothic art, stood in fine gardens filled with statues, fountains, pleasant walks, exotic shrubs, summer-houses, and fishponds, all laid out at great expense and lavishly maintained.
The rooms, halls, galleries, and cabinets were most handsomely and luxuriously furnished with all the famous rich splendour of the Netherlands; tapestries, hangings, pictures by the most renowned artists; carpets, rugs, objects from the East and the Indies; all the ornate beauty that taste could desire and wealth execute, distinguished the dwelling of the Prince of Orange.
The household, with stewards, secretaries, clerks, musicians, chaplains, falconers, huntsmen, gardeners, cooks, valets, pages, servants, and now augmented by Anne's women, amounted to over a thousand persons, and one of the most lavish and famous features of the establishment was the perpetual banquet kept in one of the halls, from which extravagant hospitality was indiscriminately extended to all comers at any hour of the day and night. The dishes, fruits, confectionery, and wines were constantly replenished, but never removed.
In this household, beside which that of the Elector was simple indeed, Rénèe felt herself utterly alien and overwhelmed; but during the first days of her residence there, while in attendance on Anne's nervous illness, she observed, as closely as she was able, him who had already so excited her curiosity, namely, the Prince.
She found he was good-tempered with all, loved by all, extravagant, reckless of his own interests, and very much the master.
From her high window, round which the pigeons flew, she would wait for a glimpse of those who came to wait on him: Egmont, the Stadtholder of Artois and Flanders, as magnificent a lord as William himself, and of almost as proud and ancient descent; Count Hoorne, another great seigneur, but a sombre and gloomy man; Brederode, handsome, reckless, usually inflamed with wine; Count Hoorne's brother, the Seigneur de Montigny; and De la Marck, the Seigneur de Lumey.
And Rénèe soon perceived that these great nobles were all animated with one object, and that object hatred of Cardinal Granvelle.
How far the Prince was heading these malcontents she could not tell; she noticed that though he was so gay, and appeared so open, he was not reckless in speech, and she divined that he was reserved and prudent in all serious matters; she believed, too, that his position was difficult, even perilous. If so, certainly his new wife contributed nothing to soothe either difficulties or perils; indeed, her behaviour would have hampered any man. In her vanity and arrogance she was ungracious to his friends; she quarrelled with Egmont's wife, who was the sister of the Elector Palatine, on the question of precedence; and she chose to consider herself injured because the Regent kept her waiting when she first went to pay her duty.
But though she was behaving like a fretful child, she could not fail to be an important pawn in the great game that was beginning to be played in the Netherlands, and Rénèe wondered who would try to rouse her to a sense of her position, for at present she was showing capricious favour to the Cardinal's party by patronizing the wives of his creatures, Aerschot and Barlaymont.
The warning, or advice, came most unexpectedly from Sabina of Bavaria, Countess of Egmont, Princess of Gravern—the lady whose only previous acquaintance with Anne had been haughty disputes as to their order of precedency.