Chapter XII: The Grandees

The huge and lavish household of the Prince of Orange, which included counts and barons, easily afforded shelter to the poor skryer. William listened to his story, gave him a place among his people, and straightway forgot him.

But Duprès, after his late miserable adventures, was sufficiently happy to find himself under this gorgeous patronage; he had his room, his laboratory, his weekly wage, and by means of the devices he had learned from his late master, Vanderlinden, he earned many an odd ducat from the numberless people who came and went in the mansion of the Prince.

He gained, too, a considerable dole from Anne, who was overjoyed to see him again, and rejoiced at the diversion a visit to his laboratory afforded. He worked on her childish vanity with perfumes, soaps, lotions, cosmetics; and on her idle credulity, by foretelling the future by means of cards and mirrors; and with the ready wit and facile ability which were his stock in trade, he speedily became a favourite with the Princess, who was the only member of the household sufficiently idle to be able to afford him limitless time, patience, and encouragement; for Anne had no friends, and she was not interested in her second child who lived apart with nurses and maids.

While William was becoming more and more absorbed in the task of defeating Granvelle and the policies he stood for, Anne was becoming more and more addicted to her fortune telling, her magic experiments, her wine drinking, and her bouts of fury, which rendered it almost impossible to find any one to wait on her. Only Rénèe le Meung remained at her task, patient, impassive, serving her mistress with as much devotion as if she loved her, concealing her faults as much as possible, and doing all in her power to make Anne preserve a reputable appearance before her world. It was a thankless, bitter task, but Rénèe performed it with as complete a self-abnegation as any anchorite his daily round of prayers and penances.

Anne had drifted completely from her husband, the passionate affection she had once evinced for him never revived in one single moment of tenderness. His quarrel with Granvelle, which had closed the Regent's Court to her, his absorption in affairs in which she refused to take the slightest interest, and the neglect she fancied she had received from all in Brussels, had produced in Anne a bitter disappointment from which grew an equally bitter dislike of her husband whom she regarded as the author of these evils.

But William, eminently generous, peace-loving, and used to domestic gentleness and serenity, made more than one attempt to restore amity; Anne's character bewildered and confused him.

Soon after he had received the momentous news that Cardinal Granvelle had requested the Regent's permission to accompany his brother for a few days into Burgundy to visit their mother, and that Egmont's offer to go to Madrid and explain the affairs of the Provinces in person had been declined, and that the King's answer to the petitions of Orange, Egmont, and Hoorne to remove the Cardinal had been a dry and stiff note bidding the three once more take their places at the Regent's table, William summoned a meeting of all the grandees who had leagued with him against the Cardinal.

The Prince was serious that day; he was often serious lately; matters in the Netherlands became daily worse. The daily sight of the horrible executions of the Inquisition were driving the people to frenzy, the estates and cities were protesting against the abuse of their charters, and Margaret was helpless. She advised moderation, she promised moderation, but she did not enforce it, for Inquisitor Titelmann was daily in her antechamber, and she was as afraid of Peter Titelmann as she was afraid of Granvelle and of Philip.

So the Prince of Orange, looking about him, beheld confusion, tumult, mystery, danger, and blood; the sky was dark, the air heavy with menaces, and to his acute ear an even more deadly sound was discernible—the first low roll of drums beating up for war. The day of the gathering of the grandees, passing through a little cabinet on his way to the chamber where he was to meet them, he unexpectedly saw his wife, leaning on her side in the window-seat, arranging strange Eastern cards in fantastic patterns.

Behind her a glory of coloured glass cast blue and crimson and gold light over the smooth panelled-wood walls of the little room, over the bent figure of the Princess in her trailing, untidy gown of white and black Venetian velvet, and over the crudely coloured and grotesquely pictured faces of the cards she was arranging with such care.

On a stool near her, but out of the stream of light, sat Rénèe, her brown dress scarcely distinguishable from the panelling and the shadows, but her fair face, her vivid hair, brilliant above the plain linen of her small ruff.

William paused on seeing the two women. Anne glanced up and then down again without saying a word; Rénèe rose and curtsied. The Prince hesitated a moment, then crossed to his wife and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"_Ma mie_," he said gently, "what occupation is this for you?"

"I am telling my fortune," returned Anne, "in the hope that the future may be fairer than the past; I am telling little Anne's fortune, in the hope it may be better than mine."

"Why in this public place?" asked the Prince.

Anne violently threw down the two cards she held and rose.

"Because I am tired of my rooms! I am tired of everything! Why do you interfere in my movements?"

William caught her small, hot, and feeble hand.

"If you would live more in accord with me I could make life sweeter for you," he said almost wistfully.

She stood sullenly, looking away.

"Listen, Anne," he continued, "it means much to any man who has difficult affairs on his shoulders to know his wife is bearing her part with patience and discretion——"

"Ah, now you are preaching, like my Uncles Augustus and William," cried the Princess fiercely, "and that, princely Highness, is what I would never endure."

She swept all the cards savagely from the window-seat to the floor and turned away; the Prince's anger was checked by the sight of the limp that marred her walk and impeded her haste to be gone from him.

Rénèe began picking up the cards; the light fell over her now, glorifying her opulent beauty that neither her plain dress nor her own cold indifference could eclipse.

"Where is the Princess going?" asked William.

"I think she will go to the workshop of her alchemist, as she calls Duprès, the Burgundian whom Your Highness is sheltering."

The Prince looked keenly at this fair woman who might have so easily been brilliant and who was so extraordinarily passive and so unnaturally patient; it was not the first time he had noticed her utter self-effacement.

"Child," he said kindly, "I fear your service is a dull one and your mistress difficult."

"I hope for nothing better, Your Highness," replied Rénèe quickly.

"You are very pretty to be so meek," smiled William.

The warm colour rushed to the waiting-woman's face; she stood looking down at the gathered cards in her hands.

"Her Highness keeps me out of charity," she said; "my father was slain as a heretic—we lost everything. I am quite friendless, and quite penniless, but for Her Highness."

"I am sorry," replied the Prince gently; "but do not speak of charity—and what you gain is hardly earned. I have marked that. What were your estates?"

She named them.

"They were confiscated by the Inquisition," she added.

William sighed, well knowing that such property was impossible of recovery.

"When you find your husband I will dower you," he said.

Rénèe lifted her face; he could not understand the look on it which almost startled him.

"I thank Your Highness," she said. "Shall I now attend the Princess?"

"Yes, keep with her," returned the Prince. He was turning away when he added, "Whom does she meet in this workshop?"

"Very few, Highness; sometimes there is there a certain Rubens, a lawyer, and his wife, who are friends of Duprès."

"That is not company for the Princess of Orange," said the Prince. He frowned, hesitated; then turned sharply away.

Rénèe stood still a moment, the rose colour glowing in her face, then went in search of Anne.

But the Princess was not in Duprès' laboratory; the waiting-woman found her in her room, sunk in the apathy that was the usual result of her fits of passion.

She sullenly bade Rénèe leave her alone, and that lady turned away, idleness and the whole afternoon before her. Katrine had already slipped out into the garden to meet some cavalier, the other women each had her own duty or her leisure; there was no company for Rénèe. She went out into the beautiful galleries, empty for once, and turned rapidly towards the hall where the Prince was to meet the grandees. It was one of the principal chambers of the mansion, and had a large musician's gallery from which Rénèe and the other waiting-women and pages often watched the balls, masques, and feasts going on below.

Rénèe now tried the little door leading to the private staircase of the gallery—it was unlocked; the meeting was no secret, and precautions against eavesdroppers had not been taken. With a heart strangely beating, Rénèe mounted the little dark stair and came softly out into the gallery which was shadowed and partly concealed by long crimson brocade curtains stitched and fringed with black.

Sheltered by the heavy folds, the waiting-woman peeped down into the hall glowing from the light of a great fire which flamed up the huge chimney, and sparkling from the winter sunlight pouring through the coloured glass of the high long windows.

On the walls hung tapestries of silk run with gleams of bullion: they represented the story of Medea and Jason.

Against the brilliant background were grouped all the grandees and nobles who were leagued against the Cardinal.

Rénèe's glance went eagerly from one to the other. There was Egmont in a camlet doublet with hanging sleeves embroidered with a bunch of arrows, in imitation of his famous livery; there was Hoorne, aloof, silent, gloomy, disliking his company only less than he disliked the Cardinal; there was Montigny, young Mansfeld, and Hoogstraaten, gorgeous young knights in brocade and silk; the two graceful younger Nassau Counts; the Marquis Berghen, heavy and corpulent; Brederode; the Seigneur de Glayon; Meghem, alert and warlike; and William of Orange, the man who was the acknowledged leader and centre of these Netherland Seigneurs and Stadtholders.

He was leaning over the high back of a gilt leather chair, talking earnestly of the instances of the atrocities of the Inquisitors which had come to his ears, and of the necessity for resisting them and their protector, Granvelle, to the utmost.

"Granvelle has asked for leave to go to Burgundy," he finished. "From secret information I believe he has asked for leave on Philip's advice, but, be that as it may, it must be our charge to see that once he has left the Netherlands he does not return."

He ceased speaking, but did not move from his easy yet thoughtful attitude while the groups about him broke into animated speech, while above all could be heard the voice of Brederode offering to wring Granvelle's neck if ever he should again set foot in the Netherlands once he had left them.

Rénèe gazed at William as he stood quietly observing the others, his dark face resting on his slim brown hand, a confusion of gold and crimson light falling over his slender figure; she noted the violet sheen of his Sicilian brocade, and the stiff points of the openwork double ruff which encircled his small well-shaped head.

Rénèe remembered how she had first seen him coming up the stairs of the town hall of Leipsic to greet his bride, and how, on the evening of his wedding day, she had looked down from a gallery on him, as she was looking now, and seen him move through the slow figures of the dance and sit beside Anne on the gold couch while the mummers brought them lilies and sweetmeats.

Rénèe had long since reversed her first judgment of the Prince. She no longer thought him an idle extravagant courtier, she had seen him proved brave, able, resolute; she knew that he set his face against the tyranny which put the Netherlands under the Inquisition, and now she heard him speak for liberty of conscience, for tolerance, for justice for the heretics—those poor creatures about whom great nobles usually concerned themselves not at all.

_He_ cared, however; she had heard him speak in a moved voice of Titelmann's burnings and slayings; she had heard him dare to declare that these things should not be.

She found that she believed in him—strangely, intensely believed in him; it seemed to her that he was only half-revealed even to these men about him, that there was a part of him as yet known to no one, and that he had qualities which had never been guessed. She believed he would go further than he said, do more than he promised, be indeed a buckler and a shield, a light and a sword, to her country.

She drew completely back behind the curtains and put her shuddering hands before her face. She knew now why she had stayed with Anne, enduring everything; it was because of him, because she wanted to serve him, to hear of him, to be near him, because she thought he was the hero whom she had despaired to find, because she loved him.

Erect and motionless she stood, hearing his voice again as he spoke to his friends—the voice and tone of a self-reliant man, but one who eagerly wants sympathy, who almost wistfully asks for trust and belief. Rénèe had noticed before this gentleness of the strong nature, this affectionate friendliness of the astute wit, and they were to her eminently lovable traits, for by his gentleness she judged his strength—that greatest strength that is ever allied with sweetness.

As she stood there hidden, listening to his voice, the strangeness of life smote her almost intolerably. He was a great Prince who would never notice her save with that kindness of utter indifference which he would show to any of his servants; there was she, helpless to serve him, bound to eternal abnegation yet dedicated to him with her whole untouched heart and soul; and there was Anne, his wife, to whom he turned for companionship and sympathy, repulsing him fiercely, almost hating him, preferring the society of Duprès, the charlatan, or to drink herself stupid in her chamber rather than share any of his aims and cares.

And to keep her from utter degradation, to soften her furies, to coax her good humour, to excuse her, to put the best of her forward and conceal the worst, that was the only service Rénèe could render the Prince—a little thankless service, one that would be never rewarded, not even noticed in its true worth, yet she was glad to do it for this man who was standing for her country and her religion, this man whom she loved.

She heard the grandees leaving—their pleasant voices, the mingled footsteps, the opening and closing of the door.

When silence fell she looked again over the edge of the balcony.

The Prince was alone, seated by the fire, his head bent; by his side was a pretty little white hunting dog, and William's right hand absently caressed its long ears.

His face was in profile to Rénèe, and the firelight played over the fine lines of it, the low forehead, the straight nose, the firm mouth and chin, the compact head with the dark close hair; he was slightly frowning, and his brows were drawn over his eyes usually so wide open and vivacious.

In refinement, precision of outline, exactness of proportion, and expression both of elegance and force, he looked that perfect type, at once intellectual and athletic, which the ancients gave to their heroes—a type so removed from coarseness or grossness as to appear almost delicate, yet in reality strong with the supreme strength of a brain perfectly adjusted and a mind perfectly balanced and a body admirably made.

The twilight began to enter the sombre, magnificent chamber, and all the colours of glass windows, rich furniture, brilliant tapestry were blended into one deep glowing shadow, in the midst of which the dying ruby gleam of the fire brought out the figure of the Prince in his gorgeous brocades, his thoughtful face now serene as a fine mask, leaning back in his gilt chair and gazing in the flames, so wholly unconscious of that loving spectator who watched him so breathlessly from the gallery.

At last she moved away, quietly through the shadows, down the dark stairs and back to her duty. Anne was in her usual place by the stove, drinking sugared beer, and little Katrine was moving about the room sobbing under her breath with a great red mark on her face where her mistress had slapped her for being late.

Rénèe whispered to the girl to go away, and herself commenced the duties of putting in order all the Princess's disarranged things.

Anne began railing at her in a voice broken with tears; the waiting-woman hardly heard, for in her ears were the words she had just heard the Prince speak, and before her eyes the picture of him in the twilight, alone and thoughtful.