"I wish you had left me in Saxony," she sobbed foolishly. "What life is this for me?"
"It is not over-sweet for me, Madame," replied the Prince. "But do not think that you can trouble me further. I now know your worth, and can dismiss you from my mind."
She was frightened, half-sobered, for never before had he spoken so coldly to her, and the finality of his tone struck even her dazed brain, and she dimly realized that she had lost him.
"This comes of all these miserable quarrels," she muttered confusedly—"your livery—your rhetoric play——"
"There is no need for a rhetoric play wherewith to mock me," interrupted William. "Your Highness plays a sorrier morality here than any mouthed in the streets."
He left her; he went back to his guests. Rénèe and Katrine, helped by another frightened woman, got the Princess to bed.
They then sat down, drearily enough, to their supper, and conversed in whispers of Egmont's livery, their mistress, the rhetoric play, and the things, big and small, which went to make their life.
CHAPTER XI
THE JESTERS AND THE RHETORIC PLAYERS
That winter the Count Adolphus, who had been seeing service with the King of Denmark, joined the Nassau household at Brussels, where Count Louis was already living; he too hoped for some post under his brilliant brother, and meanwhile eagerly joined the party of the grandees and closely associated himself with the band of young and reckless cavaliers, such as Count Louis, Count Hoogstraaten, young Mansfeld, and Henry Brederode.
It was a gorgeous life, an extravagant life, a life in every way reckless and opulent that these seigneurs led on the edge of revolution, on the edge of the King's wrath, on the edge perhaps of worse things than any of them dreamed.