WILLIAM OF ORANGE
The morrow of the wedding, in the still early hours before the tourneys,
mummings, and festivals had begun, while Anne was in the hands of women
again being combed, perfumed, and arrayed for the gaieties of the day,
the Prince left the town hall unattended and crossed the market square
to the handsome residence where his brothers were lodged. Count Louis
and Count Adolphus were still abed, weary with dancing and feasting, but
Count John was in the great library of the house writing letters. This
Nassau was a fine member of his fine race, well-made, alert, with
intelligent noble features, though blunter than those of his brothers
and too broad for perfect comeliness; his eyes were dark and unusually
brilliant, his close hair and moustaches light brown; he had not the
great courtliness and magnificence of William nor the singular charm of
his younger brother, but he was a very frank, open, high-minded
gentleman of a winning appearance, though somewhat grave for his
twenty-five years.
He still wore his morning gown of purple velvet with great sleeves
purflewed in gold; like all his house he was eminently a grand seigneur.
When his brother entered he rose and greeted him with real affection.
Although William had so early left his home for a new faith and more
splendid fortunes, which had made him an intimate of an Emperor and
placed him high above all his family in rank, his relations with his
parents and his brothers and sisters had always remained warm and
sincere. The recent death of his father had left him Count of Nassau and
head of the Dillenburg branch of his house, and his brothers regarded
him with augmented devotion and affection both as their hereditary chief
and the most famous and brilliant wearer of their name.
"So early?" said Count John.
"I had news from Mechlin last night," said William, who had his agents
everywhere. "Did you hear?"
"Nay," replied his brother. "How should I hear anything yesterday save
jests and compliments? How is little Anne?"
William raised his brows and smiled; he moved to the sunny window, and
seated himself in the red-cushioned embrasure. John, with a quick
excuse, returned to finish his letter which was to his mother at
Dillenburg, giving her an account of yesterday's ceremony.
The Prince looked out on to the market square; the long tension of his
marriage negotiations being now over, he felt a kind of disappointment
mingled with his relief, almost as if in his heart he doubted if this
much-disputed match had been worth the immense pains he had taken to
forward it. Hitherto his relations with women had always been pleasant;
he had been first married, when he was seventeen, to Anne of Egmont, the
wealthy heiress of the Van Burens. Her hand had not been sought by him,
but had been in the nature of a magnificent gift from the favour of the
Emperor. Anne, however, had been gentle, prudent, tender, and he had
lived with her in contentment and peace; the other women whom he had
known or courted since her death had all had some quality to attract or
enthral. He was a knight who could choose among the finest by reason of
his person as well as of his rank, and his taste had always led him to
the gay, the magnificent, the loving. The few hours since he had met his
bride yesterday had seemed to show him a specimen of womanhood with
which he was unfamiliar; the fretful, deformed, passionate, and ignorant
girl who was now his wife a little bewildered, a little troubled him.
Already he had been stung by her tactless exhibition of the pride that
could rate him her inferior, already he had winced a little at the
unattractiveness her hysteric excitement and her over-sumptuous attire
had emphasized.
Count John closed up and sealed his letter, then glanced at William, who
still sat thoughtfully; the sun was over him from head to foot, and
sparkled in the thick waves of his chestnut hair and in the bronze and
gold threads of the dark-green damask doublet he wore.
"What news from Mechlin?" asked the younger brother.
"Granvelle made a public entry to celebrate his appointment as
archbishop," replied William briefly. "No one of consequence was there,
and the people went into their houses and put the shutters up."
"It is believed that he will enforce the Inquisition in the
Netherlands," remarked John thoughtfully.
"He most assuredly will," said William. "He seems to have unbounded
influence with the King."
John looked at him and hesitated; he saw that his brother was unusually
grave, and he had a shrewd guess at the cause, but he did not venture to
probe William's unusual reserve.
"What did you come to speak of?" he ventured at last.
"Of Cardinal Granvelle," answered William, looking at him.
Count John cast down his brilliant eyes. He was a keen follower of the
political events in the Netherlands, and knew perfectly well how matters
stood between Cardinal Granvelle and his brother; it was a difficult
position, and one that promised great storms in the future.
Anthony Perrenot, at first Bishop of Arras, recently created Archbishop
of Mechlin and Cardinal Granvelle, had at one time been an intimate and
supporter of William of Orange, and was still by the world considered
his friend; his brother had been William's tutor, and numbers of his
relatives held posts and offices in William's lavish and magnificent
household. The Prince as Stadtholder of Holland, Utrecht, and Zeeland,
and member of the State Council, and the priest as the most powerful
member of all the three Boards which advised and controlled Margaret of
Parma—Philip's recently-appointed Regent in the Netherlands—had been
much brought together, and at first had works as colleagues and friends.
But lately Granvelle's violence toward heresy, his smiling insolence,
his rapacity, his underhand intrigues with Philip had alienated him from
William, who was averse to persecution, and, moreover, since their last
stormy parting in the streets of Flushing, no longer in such high favour
with his master, Philip. The friendship between Granvelle and William
had changed to coolness, then to dislike, and would soon, it seemed,
approach open rupture; the priest's new dignities, which set him above
all Margaret's councillors—who had always regarded him as their inferior
(he was the son of a Burgundian commoner)—did not please the Prince, and
this triumphal entry into Mechlin during his absence was a piece of
defiance on the part of the new Cardinal that further irritated him.
"This Perrenot grows too great," he said now impulsively. "He has the
ear of the Regent——" He checked himself, looked at his brother, who was
watching him eagerly, and then added, "John, what do you think would
happen if the Inquisition were set up in the Netherlands as it is in
Spain?"
"The States General, the Councils, the Stadtholders would protest."
"And if their protests were of no avail?"
"Then—I do not know," said John gravely.
"The people would revolt," replied William of Orange, "for I tell you
nearly all in the Netherlands are at heart of the Reformed Faith. When
His Majesty delivered to me my charge, he counselled me to stamp out
heresy, and he gave me several papers containing lists of those
suspected—there were many hundreds of them. Some great ones I warned.
And I burned the lists. But Cardinal Granvelle has already ferreted out
many whose names were thereon."
"I did not know of this," exclaimed John.
"Lock it in your heart," said the Prince. "I was bred a heretic," he
added, with a smile.
"You have always seemed one of us to me," returned the brother simply,
"and never a true Papist."
"Oh, I am a good Catholic," said William, looking out of the window,
"but I do not think any man should lose his life for his faith, nay, nor
his property nor his honours. I believe in tolerance, John, and there
are few of that mind."
"It would be a monstrous thing if you should become a persecutor," said
Count John, "seeing our father was the first Prince to bring the
Reformed Faith into Germany."
"Had I been of that inclination," replied the Prince, "I should not have
made this match. What do you think was the reason of it, if not the
alliance of Saxony and Cassel—these Protestant States?" He rose now and,
looking very earnestly at his brother, came forward into the room.
"John," he said, narrowing his eyes a little, "it is in my heart to tell
you of something I have as yet told no man. And do you keep it secret,
even from our brothers, who are as yet very young."
"Speak what you wish; it stays with me," replied Count John.
"It is this then: When I and the Duke of Alva were hostages in France,
there was an occasion when I was with King Henry hunting—in the forest
of Vincennes it was—and we two being apart from the others, the King
fell to talking of the peace between him and King Philip, and his great
eagerness for the concluding of this. Then, drawing on in his discourse,
he did disclose to me a deep design there was between him and my King to
exterminate heretics—which design the Duke of Alva was privy to and
arranging with him, and he thought I too knew of it, so discussed it
with me. And it seemed that this secret project was no less than to
destroy all heretics in the realms of France and Spain, and to so uproot
the doctrines of Luther that they would never grow again. And this, he
said, might be partly done by a general slaughter of these heretics, but
the time was not yet ripe. And from his speech I understood that if one
looked but askance at an image he might be cast into the flames."
"And you—what did you do?" asked John, startled.
"I feigned that I knew as he thought I did, marked and noted what he
said, and breathed no word of it," replied the Prince simply, as if such
self-control and astuteness were the commonest things.
Count John was silent with astonishment and interest.
"And therefore, as you remember," continued William, "as soon as I was
returned I did influence the States General to beg the King to send
forth the foreign soldiery, which he could not well refuse."
"Ah, it was you, not the States!" exclaimed John.
"As His Majesty guessed," smiled William. "'Not the States, but
you—you!' he said,—in the second person, John. That was in a Flushing
street, and I left him there and would not see him to his ship."
"But since then he has been as favourable to you as always," said Count
John anxiously, "even in the matter of this marriage, which was hateful
to him, he gave in and sent you a gift."
"Yet," replied the Prince, "he would put me and the other Stadtholders
beneath the foot of Granvelle, who is, I do not doubt, his chosen
instrument to commence this work of exterminating heresy in the States."
"And you?"
"I was much dismayed when first I heard from King Henry of this ruthless
policy, for I knew it meant the ruin and death of many virtuous people;
and then I resolved I would do what I could for them, especially in the
Netherlands. And so I will."
Count John looked slightly surprised to hear his magnificent brother
speak with such unwonted gravity.
"Why, who is to withstand King Philip and King Philip's men—such as
Granvelle?" he asked rather hopelessly.
"The House of Nassau might do it," smiled William lightly.
"You do not mean to oppose the King?" cried the Count.
"Why, God forbid," said the Prince, in the same tone, "but I might
oppose his policies, and I shall certainly put a stone or so in the path
of my Lord Cardinal."
"I fear this marriage has done you little good after all," remarked his
brother regretfully. "Here is the King and the Regent displeased, and
the Landgrave of Cassel angered too. Apart from your religion, he says
(his son told me), you have too many debts to take a wife."
"Those same debts must be looked to," said William, in the assurance of
a man of unlimited wealth and unassailable position.
"And the story has got abroad," continued the Count ruefully, "of that
banquet you gave with the cloth and plates and dishes all of sugar, and
the Landgrave is spreading it round Saxony and Cassel as a proof of your
great extravagance."
"And what of these festivities?" laughed William. "Will they not cost
every thaler of the Fräulein's dower that has been so much vaunted?"
Count John sighed. The Nassau family had largely built up their present
position through prudent and splendid marriages, and he was sorry that
his brother, who had married the richest heiress in the Netherlands for
his first wife, should not have done more magnificently with his second
choice, for he saw nothing to recommend Anne but her rank, her father's
fame, and the possible alliance of her Protestant kinsfolk—all, Count
John thought, doubtful benefit.
William came up to his brother and placed his shapely hand on his
shoulder.
"These debts will be looked to," he repeated. "Wait till I return to
Brussels."
The door opened hastily, and Louis and Adolphus entered, both in their
light tourney harness, and laughing together from sheer gaiety and
amusement.
Adolphus was equipped from head to foot in a crimson padded jousting
suit studded with gilt metal nails; he was the youngest of the four, no
more than a youth, noble in appearance, and wholly lovable, fairer than
his brother in colouring, but of the same slenderness of make.
Both greeted William with great affection, and Louis, who was clattering
in gold-embossed cuirass, cuisses, vambraces, and greaves, broke out
laughing with the jest that had so diverted him and Adolphus.
"Highness, we want the old magician to foretell the future for us—he has
a spirit who can reveal all things; he said he would call it if we
wished, and ask what our fate would be!"
"Tush!" said John hastily, "belike it were mummery or else a trick of
the Devil."
But William was always ready for curious trials and experiments, though
he had strangely little belief in any such things.
"Who is this magician?" he asked gaily.
"A Frenchman who has his abode with the Elector's alchemist," replied
Adolphus. "They say he has done wonderful things. The Elector declares
he really has such a spirit."
"His Grace is very credulous," remarked Louis. "He will take no action
but after he has consulted his charts and his tables, his wheels of
fortune and his crystals."
"I believe," persisted John, "that the Devil is in it all."
"Well," declared Adolphus, "the man is coming here to-night before
supper, when we shall have a little leisure."
"I will come if I may," said the Prince. "Perhaps I shall have time
while Anne is with her tire-women."
He took up his hat and prepared to leave; he saw that there was no
chance of a further private talk with John, and he was too much of a
courtier to risk being late in his return to the town hall.
As he passed Louis and Adolphus, he put them back against the wall and
laughingly criticized their appointments, while John came and leant on
his shoulder.
The four brothers, all so young, so charming, so magnificent, so full of
noble life and vigour, made a fair picture as they stood so, laughing
together from sheer good spirits because this was the lovely morning of
their days and none of them had yet known sorrow.
In their slender knightly persons, the very erect carriage of their
small heads, their warm colouring, something quick and fiery in their
movements, there showed a great likeness between them, proclaiming their
common blood, but each was a distinct personality—the Prince, dark,
dominant, superb, despite his gay smiling air; John, serious, slightly
austere; Louis, graceful, charming, modest, with his long light-brown
locks and laughing eyes; Adolphus, blonde, handsome, eager, very
princely in bearing.
So, still laughing, they parted, William hastening across the sunny
square, where every cap was lifted and every head bent to him, to the
town hall.
As he approached the antechamber to his apartments, he saw Anne through
an open door.
She was ready clothed for the midday repast and the tourney in a gown of
violet cloth of gold veiled in falls of silver lace and finished by a
ruff of pure gold thread a foot deep.
William heard her sharp voice raised, and instinctively slackened his
step.
A lock of Anne's tresses had caught in the stiff edge of her ruff; one
of her women in disengaging it chanced to pull the crimped hair.
Anne turned and smacked the girl's face smartly enough to bring the
tears to her eyes.
The Prince saw this little episode; a new type she was indeed, this
fierce little cat with her claws always ready, he thought.
As he entered the room Anne became all softness and affection and
gentleness.
William saluted her rather absently, but she flushed with joy at his
conventional courtly compliments which her inexperience took literally.
"Tell me of Brussels?" she implored, clinging to his arm. "What shall I
do in Brussels?"
"Amuse yourself, _ma mie_," replied William lightly, "and learn the
courtesies of the country," he added with a gentle sarcasm which was
wholly unperceived by the bride.