A CHILL and cheerless afternoon in the autumn of 1573, a low sun near its setting, heavy masses of stormy cloud above, fiat green fields below, and everywhere, far as the eye could reach, these same monotonous fields, sundered by broad ditches, or sluyts, full of water. The sunset from its eyebrow staring flashed a level gaze along the lines of still water, making the near ones glow and shimmer, while those farther off lay cold and dark between their banks of green. Black against the cloudy background stood the ruins of a little village, charred and stained with smoke. Not a living thing was in sight, except a solitary horse, and the occupants of the rough country cart he was dragging along a road which had once been good, but stood now in great need of repair.
In the cart there were three persons, a man, who held the reins, a woman and a little girl. All wore long coarse cloaks, and as far as appeared from their dress they might have been peasants. A broad-leaved felt hat shaded the features of the man—refined and thoughtful features, just now full of anxiety. Adrian Perrenot, or Adrian Pernet, as he called himself now, had not lain on rose leaves since we saw him last, seven years ago. By his side there sat a fair, grave woman, with a sweet and thoughtful face, Rose Marchemont, or Rose Pernet, his beloved and loving wife. Between them, in that best place for a child, especially a maiden child, sat their little Roskĕ, who took something from both, her father’s broad brow and sensitive lip and nostrils, her mother’s eyes and cheeks. What she took from neither was a certain little air of importance, as of one busy with great affairs, and quite capable of managing them. Just now she was addressing some voluble and emphatic explanations to her doll, a great-great-grandmother of the Dutch dolls our grandmothers play with. For her the dreary surroundings had no existence. She lived in the enchanted world of childhood; and for the rest, were not father and mother both there to take care of her? She was entirely happy.
Very few older or wiser people could have been happy at that time in the Netherlands. It is true that the Mack of three centuries ago must have been a shadeless black than Nooks to us in the retrospect, otherwise life would scarcely have been possible at all. Yet would it tax the wildest and most lurid imagination to exaggerate the blackness of darkness that brooded over the country during those terrible years, years ‘written within and without with mourning, lamentation and woe,’ when the Duke of Alva bore rule over the tortured Marchemont, in that strange gleam of light which sometimes comes ‘betwixt the darks of life and death,’ had foretold in the future a time of trial, even fiercer than the past. The halcyon days of the early summer of 1566, the days of the great field preachings—at one of which Adrian and Rose were married—were rudely broken in upon by the excesses of the Iconoclasts.
Although these were quickly repressed, and the land restored to quietness, the fiat of the tyrant of Spain called up an avenging host to execute his will upon the land, guilty in his opinion of rebellion and sacrilege. With the pitiless, remorseless Alva at its head, the army of vengeance wound its slow length along—like a brilliant, glittering, deadly snake—from distant Italy to the doomed and trembling Netherlands. Terror and consternation went before, men’s hearts failing them for fear. All who could flee, left the country; business was at a standstill; trade paralyzed; cities almost deserted.
Adrian Pernet was at this time an avowed Protestant. There was no hypocrisy in the profession he made of sharing the creed of his bride. He had little or nothing to discard; while, looked at on its positive side, the Reformed faith seemed to him grand and pure; a noble statue of white marble, which, indeed, is only a representation, but still a worthy representation, of the unseen reality. It not only satisfied his reason, but stirred his imagination, even to enthusiasm. Moreover, in his heart love opened the door to faith; it was easy for him to believe that the faith which made Rose and Marchemont what they were was a good one, worthy of a good man’s hearty acceptance.
In that age of passionate dogmatism, he could not escape from dogma. But he considered that he took the step from the ridiculous to the sublime in exchanging the dogma of Transubstantiation for that of Justification by Faith. On this and kindred subjects he easily learned enough to have satisfied a Synod of pastors. ‘Thoroughly persuaded in his own mind,’ he was able to make a sincere and intelligent confession of faith, nor could any one allege against him any shortcomings of practice.
‘What did he yet lack? Nothing,’ said Junius, Wille, De Bray, all his new friends and associates; and, ‘nothing,’
Rose whispered softly in her heart of hearts, as she gave God thanks for him every day. If, indeed, he did lack anything, it was that ‘the Faith,’ as yet, was more to him than its Author, and the doctrine of Justification more to him than the Lord Jesus Christ.
When the evil days came, Adrian intimated to the Venetians that they must seek another physician, and prepared to flee to England, the land of hope and liberty. But Rose at the time was very ill; she could not travel without danger to her life. He must wait a little, till she should improve. While he waited, the day of grace, when flight was possible, passed by, never to return. His little Roskĕ saw the light amidst the forced and hollow rejoicings at the coming of Alva. Antwerp, which ten years before had welcomed her preserver, the Prince of Orange, with one long shout from ten thousand throats, welcomed her destroyer with joyless feasts and detested pageants, as a maiden coerced into a hated marriage puta on her bridal-robe with tears.
The quays were well watched now, and ships bound for England thoroughly searched. The furnace of persecution was heated seven times more than heretofore. Martyrdom, apostacy, or strictest concealment were the only alternatives opera to the Protestants; and the last became every day more difficult. Some of the merchants, however, proved good friends to Adrian. The Venetian House gave him shelter, with his wife and child, on the pretext of requiring a resident physician for one of their principal merchants, who was in declining health. Yet some measure of compromise, upon his part and his wife’s, was required. This came about gradually, and with much difficulty; each yielding at last for the love of the other what neither would have yielded for self alone.
A boy was given to them after Roskĕ; but the tender bud only opened to close again. When scarcely three months old, a brief and sudden sickness took him from them. Was it wonderful that Rose thought the bereavement a Divine chastening for their unworthy compliances? Her ever-increasing remorse and misery, and other circumstances pointing to danger, at last made Adrian decide upon leaving Antwerp, and seeking another, and if possible a safer place of refuge. A very intelligent Dutch apothecary, with whom he had professional dealings, offered to send him on under a feigned name to his partner in Rotterdam, who would give him shelter.
To Rotterdam accordingly they went; and felt, for a time, a little more secure. They were less under observation than in Antwerp, and were surrounded besides by a friendly population. But Rose ceased not bitterly to mourn her faithfulness. More and more the sorrow weighed upon her heart, and cast its shadow over her face. ‘I have been untrue to my Lord,’ she said; ‘that is why He is not with me any more—as He was with my father, ay, and even with me, unworthy, in the happy days gone by.’
In public matters, the darkness only took a darker shade when the miseries of war were added to those of oppression. Here and there insane cruelty provoked mad resistance. The name of ‘Beggars,’ spoken first with jest and laughter, “twixt lip and wine-cup,” began to be whispered with pale faces and in tones of fear. Bands of ‘forest beggars,’ or ‘wild beggars,’ roamed the country, often plundering and destroying what Alva and the Spaniards left. Their pretext was revolt against an intolerable tyranny; but joined as they were by genuine brigands, they did nearly as much harm to friends as to foes. More formidable yet, but also far more useful, were the Sea Beggars.
The deaths of Egmond and Hoorn, and the exile of Orange, had ushered in the evil days. But Rose and Adrian knew, even before they left Antwerp, that the Prince was back again in the country, at the head of an army. They soon heard, however, to the deepening of their sorrow, that his army was defeated, himself a fugitive, and his brave brother, Count Adolphus, amongst the slain. He came back again, with a new army, and two more of his gallant brothers to fight by his side for freedom. Again he was vanquished, this time not by the hand of Alva, but by the terrible news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, which took from him all hope of help from France, and crushed the hearts of his followers into despair. And yet once more he returned. Setting down his foot upon the blood-stained soil of Holland, ‘Here will I make my sepulcher,’ he said.
Briel had been taken by the Sea Beggars; and other towns in the Northern provinces had driven out the Spaniards, and hoisted the Orange flag. Woe to those gallant towns, when by storm or capitulation (which was never observed) the Spaniards entered their gates again! In awful literal truth, the cry of their anguish went up to heaven, the appalled inhabitants of the surrounding country, as in the case of Zutphen, only guessing what had happened from that sound of wailing, those shrieks of agony.
Still freedom, even with such risks, was more to be desired than slavery under the Duke of Alva and Philip II. Rose and Adrian thought so; and the perilous journey they and their child were making was in search of freedom. Imminent peril, as usual, had called forth Adrian’s latent courage. His position in Rotterdam had become almost untenable; at least without further compliances, from which Rose shrank in horror. When all courses were dangerous, the boldest seemed to offer the best chance of safety. In the disguise of peasants, and in a cart purchased from countryman, he hoped they might—if not murdered on the way by Spaniards or by Beggars—succeed in reaching Leyden, a strong now, as he believed, in the possession of the patriots.