Chapter III

THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PRINCESS OF
ORANGE

Duprès—the skryer, alchemist, and religious refugee whom the Prince of Orange was sheltering—had arranged the two chambers allotted to him as half shop, half laboratory, in the fashion of Vanderlinden, the Elector Augustus' alchemist and Duprès' former master.

This fellow, partly charlatan, yet genuinely gifted, and not without a wild flash of genius at times, and real moments of spiritual insight and exaltation, had contrived, by the fascination of the supernatural arts he professed and by his wit and readiness in following the politics and scandals, the rumours and whispers of the hour, to attach to himself a considerable following, both in the Prince's household and among those who came and went in the palace, and whose visits to the alchemist (as he chose to call himself, though he had little real pretension to any of the honours of hermetic philosophy) were not noticed amid the manifold distractions of the huge establishment.

The Princess of Orange continued Duprès' most ardent patroness and most credulous dupe; she spent hours in his laboratory watching him tell her fortune by means of melted lead, by the markings in the blade bone of a freshly killed sheep, by the arrangement of strange Eastern playing-cards, or in observing the fusing and transformation of various chemicals into powder and essences which Duprès declared were the first steps to the discovery of the Philosopher's Stone.

Anne was hot on this pursuit; the events that shook the Netherlands, the threatened upheaval which might overshadow her husband, the daily torture and death of heretics, the cries arising from the tortured prisoners, the Regent's anxiety and confusion, the enigmatic attitude of the awful Philip—none of these things interested the Lutheran Princess whose father had been so splendid a champion of the Reformed Faith; but to stand over glass retorts and glowing furnaces, to listen to the Frenchman's tedious and learned explanations of matter she could not even begin to understand, to meddle with signs and wonders, to attempt to raise spirits, to experiment with perfumes, dyes, and cosmetics—all this had a deep and irresistible fascination for Anne of Orange.

And Duprès made his full profit thereby, for he obtained from her considerable sums of money, and when she had not these to give, jewels, ornaments, and even costly articles from her chambers. Rénèe le Meung had known Duprès at Dresden and then believed him to be a worthless, though cunning creature, and she found it hard to stand by and see him fool the Princess and mock the Prince; but William and all the members of the Nassau family who came and went in Brussels treated Anne and her doings with magnificent indifference, Duprès was beneath their notice, and it was not in Rénèe to play the tale-bearer and carry complaints of her mistress to her master, so she, too, had to spend the dreariest of hours listening to Duprès' jargon and watching his futile experiments, while the sickly smell of perfumes and the acrid odour of chemicals made her head heavy and feverish.

But when the Princess began visiting the laboratory alone, and the whispers and laughter grew among her women, Rénèe went through an agony of hot shame and bitter indignation compared to which the dullness of her former life was peace.

Anne was making a jest of herself, and Rénèe winced as if she had herself been humiliated, not because of Anne, but because of the name she carried.

Towards this momentous winter, when Brussels was brilliant with the pompous marriage of Alexander of Parma, Anne's women began to openly laugh at their hated mistress.

They had ceased to believe that she went to Duprès' studios solely to study magic and alchemy.

"It is to meet that young lawyer, Jan Rubens," they said, and made a mock of her behind her back.

Rénèe, sick of living, sick of loving, weak and pale with watching the ruin of her people and her faith, roused at this.

"The charlatan must go," she said, and all the women laughed again and asked, 'Why? If Anne was quiet with these amusements, why take them from her?'

But Rénèe repeated, "He must go."

She meant to take the desperate step of frightening the fellow into leaving the palace, and so closing Anne's dangerous means of communication with the outside world.

The Princess of Orange and a Flemish lawyer!—it was impossible that she should stoop so low or he look so high, yet in her heart Rénèe did not trust Anne, and meanwhile, if nothing else, she was trampling on her husband's dignity and giving cause for little men to laugh at him.

It was a wild winter day when Anne, in a bitter and stormy mood, had locked herself into her darkened chamber, that Rénèe went on her distasteful errand to the alchemist.

Rain was hurled against the palace windows with a force that shook the painted glass in the frames, and lay in great pools beneath the swaying and broken trees and bushes in the garden, until a great gust of wind would come and suck up the water in the hollows and dry the wet lashings on the windows and make the whole great building tremble, then it would die away reluctantly, and another black cloud would burst, drenching all again.

Rénèe shuddered in her worn velvet (none of Anne's women went splendidly) as she passed through the magnificent corridors and stairways to the obscure chamber where Duprès lodged.

To her surprise as much as to her relief and satisfaction she found him alone, though she had to use some authority to gain admission from the idle lad who kept his door.

Duprès was in his outer room which opened directly from the antechamber.

He was bending over an alabaster table set on gilt legs, which stood in the corner by the high window, and mixing several brilliant liquids by means of a long silver spoon.

At the sound of Rénèe's firm step he turned, and the sight of his face startled her, for he wore a glass mask bound tightly round forehead and chin by strips of black leather.

"Mademoiselle le Meung!" he cried, in tones of surprise and vexation, and, quickly covering his mixtures with silver lids, he took off the mask and looked at her keenly with his bright tired eyes.

"You did not wish to see me," remarked Rénèe.

"No," replied Duprès, at once courteous and composed, "you are wrong—no one could have been more welcome, but I am engaged on an important experiment, and told the lad I did not wish to be disturbed."

"Oh, Monsieur Duprès," said Rénèe, "do not seek to delude me with these labours of yours—I knew you in Dresden."

He placed a deep-seated leather chair for her in front of the cedar-wood fire which emitted a perfumed heat, and he answered calmly—

"You despise me and what I do, but there again you are wrong. If I can make invisible ink, potent sleeping-draughts, swift poisons, keen medicines, and cosmetics to keep women beautiful, am I not of some use in the great affairs of the world?"

"Ah, you suit your argument to your listener," replied Rénèe. "Since you cannot dazzle me with your magic and your alchemy you speak straightly, and I am thankful for it."

"Blaspheme neither magic nor alchemy," he returned thoughtfully. "All miracles are possible, but our wit is so muddy we may not achieve them. I have talked with angels and glimpsed infinity as certainly as I have been drunk and a cheat."

"Maybe," said Rénèe; she sat still, looking round the strange room full of curious pictures and diagrams, planetary signs, shelves of bottles and jars, rows of ancient books and astronomical instruments. She was tired, as always, and, as always, sad in spirit, and she felt that what she had to say was an effort difficult to make.

Duprès came and stood the other side of the wide hearth; his long black gown, his flat velvet cap, the thick gold chain round his neck, his grave, pallid, and wasted face gave him the air of a scholar long closed from the light, but his restless hands and his reckless eyes were those of a man of action.

"You have heard what is taking place in Brussels?" he asked keenly.

"I hear nothing," said Rénèe, "but the last scraps of gossip from the pages and servants. I never leave the palace and hardly the Princess's apartments."

"I can tell you this," said Duprès, with an air of lively interest, "that the younger nobles, Brederode, Culemburg, Hoogstraaten, De Hammes, have organized a league against the enforcement of the decrees of the Council of Trent. They had a meeting on the very eve of the Parma wedding. What do you think of that?" he added, smacking his lips. "Does it not look like splendid times ahead—confusion, chances, war, perhaps?"

"Is the Prince in this, or Egmont or Hoorne?" asked Rénèe.

"None of those, but the Count Louis—and Egmont's house is as full of heretics as Geneva, while our dear master is hardly a very good Catholic nor a very good loyalist," he added, with a slight, unpleasant smile.

The waiting-woman flushed and felt her heart beating fast.

"I must come to my errand," she said, "before we are interrupted."

"Yes, your errand," repeated Duprès keenly. "But first, lest we misunderstand one another, are you in the confidence of your mistress?"

"As much as anyone is, perhaps," replied Rénèe.

He looked at her searchingly, then his eyes fell; the waiting-woman was conscious of a sudden wave of disgust, of loathing for him and all the pretentious details of this room so obviously arranged to impress the foolish and ignorant, and this feeling gave her strength and courage to speak.

"You must leave the palace, Duprès," she said; "it would be better if you left Brussels, but this you must leave, and at once."

His whole face paled and hardened into a set look of defiance and alarm.

"What do you mean? Who told you to say that?" he asked roughly.

Rénèe rose.

"I speak on my own authority," she said quietly, "but if you refuse to take my warning, I will go to the Prince."

Duprès winced so palpably and looked so hideously alarmed that Rénèe was slightly astonished, slightly softened.

"Go at once," she added, following up her advantage; "you have made enough plunder and may now try your fortunes elsewhere."

Duprès rallied himself; his eyes flickered to the fire.

"What have you against me?" he asked anxiously.

"You are a plague spot, a fester in this house," answered Rénèe. "You seduce the Prince's people with lies and foolishness, you bring those here who have no right to enter these doors."

"The Princess wishes me to stay—go to her with these complaints, and hear her answer," cried Duprès, with a sudden snarl.

His words woke Rénèe's lurking anger; she flashed from coldness to heat.

"The Prince maintains you, shelters you, saved you—not his wife—and your gratitude is to pander to her foolishness and drain her of her very jewels by your tricks. And there is worse than that, Duprès, she meets here those whom she should not meet, she degrades herself by consorting with idlers in a charlatan's company. You know this—again I tell you, as a warning, you must go."

"Who gave you authority to talk so boldly?" exclaimed the alchemist in a rage. "If my honoured lady deigns to come here to watch my poor experiments, what is it to you?"

"I will not argue on this theme," returned Rénèe. "But if you are not gone within the week it shall be put before His Highness that you bring disgrace and disorder into his house."

A curious expression of dislike, rage, and half-amusement gleamed in the alchemist's narrowed eyes, but Rénèe, already hot, agitated, and half-ashamed of her own errand, her own plain speaking, was turning quickly and resolutely away, when a sudden sound caused her to stop and turn violently towards Duprès.

It was a woman's laugh she heard—a high, shrill, long laugh; it came from the alchemist's inner room, and was unmistakably the laugh of Anne of Orange.

In a flash Rénèe remembered the private door from the Princess's apartments which Anne had affected to have locked and hidden under the tapestries, in a flash she recalled the hours Anne had been seemingly enclosed in her chamber—now it was all clear enough.

"So she comes thus," said Rénèe, with tears in her eyes, "and you have been the go-between!"

"No one is here—no one," stammered Duprès, but he backed before the door, and he was colourless and quivering.

"She is there, and I will take her away," cried Rénèe. "Who is with her—who?"

"Go, go!" implored Duprès; "there is none here but a young wench who serves me. Oh, gods and angels!" he cried in real terror, as Rénèe slipped behind him and seized the handle of the door.

She thought he was going to strike her or use his short dagger on her, and she did not care; but the irresolution and the mocking fatalism that were so strongly in this man's character kept him from action.

"There is an end now," he said cynically, and stepped behind the great chair where Rénèe had sat.

The waiting-woman opened the door.

The inner room was glowing with a rich firelight which warmed the chilly gleam of the stormy daylight; the round table was set with a lace cloth and all manner of sweets, cakes, fruits, and wines; and before it, on a long couch, sat the Princess of Orange and Jan Rubens, the young lawyer.

One of his arms was round her waist, one of hers round his neck; their flushed faces were pressed together, and they were endeavouring to drink out of the same goblet, a rare thing of rock crystal, in the form of a fish, mounted in rubies and gold.

All this Rénèe saw in a breath, and while she saw she realized her own utter failure, the uselessness of all her years of effort, of watchfulness, of endurance, of patience; she had been outwitted like a fool. Anne had eluded her, and gone straight to that shame, that degradation from which Rénèe had laboured to save her; not even this service had she been able to render the Prince, and that was the bitterest thought of all.

She stood silent, holding the door open, and the two at the table stopped their foolish laughter and rose. Rubens dropped the goblet; the wine spilt over his crumpled ruff and his violet velvet suit.

"Go to your room, Madame," said Rénèe, and spoke as a mistress to a servant.

Anne was too frightened to answer; she shrank together as if she expected to be beaten.

The young lawyer tugged at his sword.

"That fool Duprès," he kept saying, "that fool Duprès——"

Rénèe could see he was half-intoxicated; she turned her back on him and spoke again to Anne.

"Go, go!" she cried. "Do you realize that you are playing with death?"

This last word seemed to recall Jan Rubens to his senses.

"I am ruined!" he cried. "I have a wife and children. God forgive me! Oh, God forgive me!"

He turned his face away and put his hands before his eyes.

Anne limped towards the door.

"Oh, make haste!" whispered Rénèe, through strained lips.

Duprès came forward; he was the most composed of the four, though there was terror in his eyes and his hands shook.

"Mademoiselle will not speak?" he said in a low voice, catching hold of Rénèe's sleeve. "A little foolishness, a little indiscretion—Mademoiselle would not make mischief for that?"

"A little foolishness," repeated Anne vaguely. She began to weep. "May I not have my amusements? You were always hard, Rénèe; do not be hard——"

"See," said Duprès, in a quick, eager whisper. "Keep this from the Prince, and I will go away—_he_ will leave Brussels——"

"Make no bargains with me," cried Rénèe passionately, exasperated with disdain of the cringing attitude of all of them, by Anne's utter lack of dignity, by the horrid sordidness of the thing she had disclosed, which sickened her as one might be sickened by lifting a smooth stone and discovering beneath a foul reptile. "You will go—all of you—and at once."

The young Fleming now stumbled forward into the outer room. He was a big, clumsy man, fresh-coloured, blonde, fair-bearded, and blue-eyed; his face was grey and distorted with terror; he stood before Rénèe shuddering like a lashed hound. She noted, with further contempt for his utter cowardice, that he neither tried to bribe nor threaten her.

"Will it be the rope—the rope?" he asked. "Or would the Prince grant the sword—for my family's sake?"

"Go," cried Rénèe, "escape from here like the thing you are!"

She caught Anne's limp hand and dragged her to the door.

"If he kills me," said the Princess sullenly, "he will take a life that is worth nothing to me." She twisted round in Rénèe's grasp to throw insult at the two men standing foolishly side by side.

"And you could neither strike a blow nor say a word, tricksters and churls!"

She said nothing more while Rénèe led her back through the palace until they came to the great staircase window which looked on the courtyard.

A cavalcade, muffled against the weather, was leaving the palace gates.

"My husband going to the Council," muttered Anne. "My husband!"

When they reached the Princess's apartments, Rénèe locked the secret door and took away the key.

Anne watched from where she crouched over the fire.

"I suppose you despise me, hate me now?" she asked.

Rénèe turned her beautiful haggard face towards her mistress, and for the first time in her long bondage she spoke what had ever been in her heart.

"I always despised and hated you," she said.

"I knew it," answered Anne apathetically, and sat silent over the warmth of the flames till she fell heavily asleep.

But the waiting-woman paced her little chamber in agonies of torment, weeping unbearably bitter tears of pain and shame and unavailing regret.